Retaliation
by Havocfrost
Summary: Humanity has found a place in the stars under the banner of the Global Defense Initiative but when forces long forgotten threaten the people it's sworn to protect, can the GDI rise to the challenge? Takes place in the Renegade AU.
1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

_August 2182, Armstrong Nebula_

_Hunsalra gas giant_

"Target is tagged, moving to capture."

The rumbling of heavy ship engines echoed through the unusually quiet frigate as it glided through the empty expanse of space into the position it had designated some five minutes earlier.  
The quiet little backwater system was officially barren if the latest star charts and travel records were to believed which made the threat of piracy in the region all the more prevalent. Nevertheless, the planet they were approaching was a favoured site for dumping excess drive core emissions without a permit, thanks to the lack of local law enforcement.

That was exactly how Charn Son'Morrik liked things and it was looking like this job was going to be a cakewalk.

"Good, disable the engines once we're in range and dispatch boarding parties." His deep and gravelly voice mixed in with the countless chimes of the consoles scattered around the ships bridge as he watched the distance between the two vessels decrease as the seconds ticked by.

The lighting of the bridge went from its normal colour of crisp green to a dark hue of red, signalling that they had now entered into live fire conditions. Power was diverted from non essential systems such as gravity and lighting towards the frigate's barriers and weapon systems in preparation for the raid.  
The vessel closed into within a few thousand meters over the next few seconds before opening fire with its forward facing battery, while its engines shifted from their cruise setting to full power.

Shells sheathed in white-blue light streaked towards the Kowloon class freighter designated the _MSV Borisov_ as its sensors detected the ambusher and its crew frantically attempted to execute evasive manoeuvres. The freighter's kinetic barriers were meant to repel space debris and micro meteorites, not the heavy weapons fire now hurtling towards it and the only real hope it had of survival was to run as fast as possible from the new contact.

The rounds from the attacking frigate impacted a few seconds later and tore through the propulsion system located at the ships stern, causing the protective plating covering sections of the hull to break away as the internal atmosphere began to vent into the oily blackness of space.

"Engines are gone, we have twenty minutes before the freighter's orbit begins to decay." The Batarian whom Charn had assigned to manage communications spoke with the professionalism more akin to an enlisted man, rather than some common pirate.

But they weren't either of those, not anymore at least. They were a highly trained insurance policy, meant to recover items of importance for whoever had enough credits to hire them and to do so quietly and covertly without leaving a trace of their existence.

"Boarding parties, breach the cargo hold and move to the bridge, ventilate anyone that stands in your way." A half dozen confirmations reached his ears as the six boarding craft moved to attach themselves along the freighter's midsection, latching onto the various different cargo modules and one of the few airlocks that served as a maintenance access for crew needing to perform makeshift repairs during a journey.

Once the entryways were pressurised, specialised cutting torches and equipment dissected the exterior of the hull and created impromptu entryways for the boarders who then poured into the vessel proper, dispatching the merchant sailors who attempted to stop them.

"We are encountering light resistance, sparse small arms fire, most likely crew issue handguns. Advancing now." The overall leader of the boarding compliment, a batarian by the name of Errej, reported back new developments to Charn as the sixty man assault team mopped up the small security detail assigned to protect the ship, as well as the odd crewman who'd dropped the credits needed for a personal weapon.

All in all, the boarders cleared the ship in little less than five minutes before coming to a halt at the entryway marking the freighter's bridge. Two of the boarding teams stayed behind in the cargo hold and near the escape pods to snuff out and deter anyone daring enough to escape while the remaining forty men stacked up around the two blast doors leading to the vessel's command chamber.

"Sir, flash or frag for the bridge?" Errej asked as his query crackled over the comms linking him to Charn.

"Flash for this one, our client might want to talk to the Captain and that means more credits for us." His employer had paid a rather exorbitant sum to hire his outfit, far more than the usual asking price on the condition that the cargo be retrieved and the ship destroyed, with heavy emphasis on both points.

"And the rest of the crew?" Errej asked once more as the sound of cutting torches melting through the bridge doors accompanied his voice through his helmet mic.

"Eliminate them." Charn responded with a voice that was deadpan, not associating the people in question as living beings and more refuse needing to be disposed of.

"Copy, breaching now." The sounds of cutting torches powering down and the loud voices of men barking orders echoed in Charn's ear as he listened in on the chaos happening on the _MSV Borisov. _He retooled his screen to show the half dozen helmet cams that a few of his men wore, projecting them onto the display hovering above his command desk.

The cacophonous sounds of concussion grenades exploding and incapacitating living beings joined with the chatter of Avenger assault rifles and Tempest submachine guns as the boarders stormed the bridge, sweeping aside the pitiful amount of resistance left attempting to withstand the attackers. A human's head was punctured by the combined arms of half a dozen men while the rest of his body met the proverbial acupuncture of hundreds of super accelerated rounds slicing through his midsection.

He switched to Errej's personal helmet cam and watched as he took cover behind one of the bulky outcroppings of metal and ceramic decorating the bridge. Half a second later the henchman had aimed his omnitool's wrist mounted launcher at a cluster of young turians and humans and let fly with the incinerate module he'd loaded previously. The small canister exploded in the midst of the group of mixed species, burning past the fabric of their hardsuits, through the pores of their skin and into the very marrow of their bones.

Their screams never even materialised as their brains, blood and organs were cooked into unrecognisable ash.

Errej's omnitool flash fabricated another canister, a submission net module favoured by slavers and mercenary groups who wished to capture valuable persons of interest for sale or interrogation at a later date, usually not surviving long in either case.

His HUD had identified one of the defending crewmembers as the captain thanks to the different uniform he wore and he rose to target the man under the cover of suppressing fire, launching the canister when the tone of a lock on rang in his ears.

The canister launched with a deft _thud_ and arced upwards above the firefight, hanging in the air for a few seconds before it came into position above the Captain and detonated. The casing carrying the modules contents blew apart and propelled the contents within downwards, allowing the electrified net to expand to full size within half a second and envelop its target in its unbreakable grip. Electricity and steely webbing wrapped itself around the captain, causing him to scream and howl in pain as the current travelled through the highway of nerve endings in his body.

Charn watched all of this with satisfaction as around the bridge, the last remaining crewmembers aboard the freighter were gunned down by attackers who had yet to add the word _mercy_ to their vocabulary.  
It almost made him wish that he'd gone aboard himself to take part in the carnage.

The last bout of battle played out before his eyes and in his ears for a few remaining seconds before the last group of defending personnel were sent from the land of the living, leaving the ship deathly quiet.

"The ship is ours and we have the Captain." Errej reported.

"Good, check the cargo and bring it back aboard, then shut off the guidance systems and let gravity do the rest."

"Copy that."

The sixty men aboard split into teams, sweeping the small freighter for valuables and survivors while ransacking the few intact corpses of the now dead crew for anything that could be worth a credit on the black market.  
Three men broke off from the methodical recovery operation and headed back down the length of the ship and back into the cargo hold.

Their brothers had already begun their work before the bridge was even secure, hacking their way past the individual security network on the container which protected whatever lay inside from prying eyes. The beeps of a successful override resonated in the cargo chamber and before long, the hiss of the self contained atmosphere inside the container they had prioritised escaped as its door retracted and revealed the contents inside.

Needless to say, the cargo wasn't the valuables of eezo or luxury goods they'd expected. Instead they were greeted by the view of sixteen bound and tied people of various races, all were unconscious with some signs of bruising somewhere on their faces, a black eye here, a broken arm there were just some of the injuries that had been inflicted upon them.

One of the boarders quickly scanned the interior with his omnitool to try and determine whether their delivery could still take place or if the prisoners were too badly beaten to be worth anything. A wave of orange crept over every inch of the room before bleeping and allowing its user to gaze upon the results it had detected.

Eight humans, two of which were, rather surprisingly, tiberium mutants with the remaining eight split evenly between asari, turians, salarians and batarians. Any further attempts to learn more about the cargo were interrupted by the hulking form of Errej and his green and grey armoured form. He pushed passed the now crowded entrance and his eyes drank in the details of the interior ever so briefly before he turned on his heels back to face his subordinates.

"Good, they're all here. Pack 'em up and load them aboard the boarding craft, then do one last sweep and head back." He didn't bother to wait for a confirmation as his tone left nothing up for debate, the boarders simply began to follow their instructions as he left to radio Charn once more.

"We've got what we came here for, just loading it up now and we'll be back in ten." His eyes continued to sweep around the cargo bay as the last systems that could correct the freighters collision course with the planet were sabotaged or outright destroyed.

"Good work Errej, I'll buy you a beer when the credits come in." Charn felt smug in the knowledge that the contract issued by one Edan Had'dah would soon be closed, and he could collect the other half of the security deposit once it was delivered back to Edan's headquarters on the planet of Camala.

"Just don't try to give me Ryncol again or I'll beat you to death with a bar stool." Errej delivered the line with just the right amount of passion to make it seem authentic.

"Who me? I wouldn't dream of it." Charn successfully managed to contain the laughter building inside him as he thought about the last person he'd pulled that trick on. The poor bastard didn't even remember the night, let alone that he'd nearly destroyed his stomach lining in the process.

"Yeah, of course not. I'll see when you get back." The click of the line closing hit his ear and he watched as the first few boarding craft began their return run from the freighter that was even then, succumbing to the ever present hand of gravity and slowly ebbing into its doomed descent.

Errej was true to his word as the last boarding party returned to their mothership some nine minutes after he'd said they would, carefully depositing their cargo in the frigate's hold before returning to the mess. Congratulations were had, kills were confirmed and the local tally of the day's best shot was posted on the ship's scoreboard for both the winner to boast of and as a benchmark for future operations.

No one noticed the other ship in the system, its jagged and broken form serving as camouflage for its true power as it hid among the rocks of a nearby asteroid belt, its sensors silently tracking the frigate making its way back to the central star system and its mass relay. Electronic eyes watched and waited as the vessel stealthily followed its prey all the way back to its objective and ultimately, the location of the one who had commissioned the operation in the first place.

* * *

_Arcturus Stream, Staging Point B._

_Four weeks later._

Arcturus was abuzz with activity, it had been since GDI had commenced their invasion of Batarian space and today was no exception. Vessels of all classes poured into the system as they made their way to and from battle, some sporting new scars while others had yet to cut their teeth in the latest war the galaxy was playing host to.

The pre-war civilian traffic had been in a state of constant flux as the shipping lanes were sometimes commandeered by human administrators for particularly important shipments of arms to the frontlines. This had the backlash of setting back delivery times of commercial goods to valued customers and the loss of revenue was sometimes greater than the gains to be had on the battlefield. Regardless, while the efficiency of civilian traffic had decreased, the quantity of it had shot up with independent contractors and civil construction firms being hired to repair or replace infrastructure that had been damaged on the newly captured worlds under Initiative control.

Other reasons for the spike were simply due to the amount of people moving away from the war zones, and with its connection to several secondary mass relays, the system was just one of a few that the latest refugees from whatever bombed out backwater that had suffered the wrath of the two clashing intergalactic titans were travelling to. Those who didn't or couldn't leave either got jobs on the garden world of Benning or were forced out of the system at the wrong end of a cruiser's main armament.

Rear Admiral Walter Irving watched the thousands of lights emitted from the shipping lanes twinkle and glisten from the viewing port of his ship, the _Constantinople,_ as he bided his time in between deployments. He was a hardset man, not one to delve into matters he considered wasteful and a career soldier by choice, obviously the one thing he was good at in the world if his rank was anything to go by.

He liked the quiet serenity of waiting, it was a chance for one to clear their minds and air out the weeks of frustration and stress that usually burnt out those who failed to cope with the harsh realities of life and war. Maybe a chance to reminisce over old memories or to simply revel in the adventure of an old fashioned paperback book, much like the one he was currently reading.

Though, all too often, the grim darkness of the twenty second century crept back into mind and he was forced to set aside the fantasy the book projected for another time, frowning as his hands finished caressing the fine finish paper and reminding him to set aside time to finish it once the latest mission was over with.

He waded through the mass of crewmen that inhabited the ship along his route to the CIC, saluting those who hadn't got the memo that that was reserved for when they were enjoying leave, not when they were supposed to be setting out in little over an hour's time.

The CIC was merged with the bridge for convenience when in battle but directly aft of it lay the Strategic Planning Room. The _Constantinople_ had been specially retrofitted to accommodate it since the cruiser had become Irving's flagship, allowing him to enjoy the benefits of a purpose built planning center.

Irving journeyed through the solid reinforced doors and into the circular room that was stuffed to the brim with data consoles, holograms, QEC communicators and crewmen as they sorted through the petabytes of new data coming in from the InOps detachment assigned to assist the Eighth Marauders. EVA units extrapolated data from the recon drones they'd dispatched to the system that had been deemed a priority target for the continued success of the war effort

The unit he commanded were specialists in heavy planetary assault, overwhelming their opponents through concentrated firepower and superior numbers before parking themselves in a planets orbit and spending however long they had razing planetary installations and troop concentrations that weren't in adequate cover. Their ships had been upgraded for this very purpose, enjoying the comforts that reinforced armour, greater numbers of reserve capacitors and more broadside cannons brought with them.

They were basically hit and run raiders, and they'd just been given the priority of targeting a planet deep in Hegemony territory, the prosperous and surprisingly multicultural garden world of Camala. It had been a jewel the Batarian crown before the war, but its garrison had been cannibalised to protect more endangered sectors when they'd been invaded, leaving its heavy industrial sectors ripe for culling.

Irving finished refreshing his knowledge and looked back towards the latest reports from the latest batch of recon drones that had returned from the system in question, his frown from before returning as he went over the new intelligence. The Explorator drones showed that the lacklustre garrison had been inexplicably bolstered as of late, something that the previous batch of drones had not shown, and that Intel was little over twelve hours old.

He found his forces were now more or less on a one to one ratio with the Batarians, some nine ships per combatant. Per the authority that came with his rank, he had the option to postpone the raid until a later date and wait till the garrison was once more a skeleton crew, letting him finish his book and maybe even catch a few days leave. Or he could press forward regardless of the new developments and cripple a major industrial center supplying the soldiers fighting against the Initiative.

His fingers flicked through the list of identified ships that the drones had picked up and found his opinion swinging towards the offensive option. The bulk of the defenders were composed of outdated Matarr class cruisers which wouldn't have a hope in hell of overpowering his own fleet, not unless their numbers suddenly tripled.

He closed the list and brought up the local system map on the main holo screen. His eyes were immediately greeted by hundreds of blue dots and planetary bodies lighting up around the display, each having the familiar golden eagle insignia hovering above them. He circled the single green dot that represented the _Constantinople_ and the rest of the system disappeared, replaced by a detailed view of the immediate surrounding space that showed eight other orange dots formed up along evenly along either side of his flagship.

"Eva, begin final confirmation routine with the rest of the fleet."

"Acknowledged."

Irving went over the last few details gathered by the drones, looking for any unusual anomalies present that could represent a minefield or sensor node, anything that could tip off the defenders early. He found nothing of the sort, only the newest assortment of ships was what had changed since the last report.

"All ships report ready status green, waiting for final confirmation from _Constantinople_."

Irving thought for a moment, looking around at all the young faces of the various men and women who were at that point thoroughly engrossed in their respective tasks. Some caught his view and exchanged a nod rather than a salute before returning to face their consoles, others failed to notice through the dark blue lighting of the CIC, continuing with their work.  
He turned back to face the system map and spoke once more.

"Send final confirmation and set a course to target."

"Acknowledged."

The various ships that comprised the Marauders lumbered into formation and headed for the mass relay, the massive tuning fork shaped structure would serve as the conduit for their journey across the stars and the latest sector to be bloodied in the war.

* * *

_"Transmitting target location to mass relay."_

The voice of the _Constantinople_'s helmsman resonated through the audio projectors on the bridge and all who heard it steeled themselves against the usual flock of butterflies that cropped up just before a battle.

_"Mass calculations complete, ten seconds to jump."_

They'd hopped from relay to relay getting to this point, it was the last step on the journey towards their target and so far they'd managed to avoid the prying eyes of spy satellites that the Hegemony loved ever so much.

_"Five seconds."_

Final weapon checks were completed, engine diagnostics were finalised and emergency capacitors couplings were hastily triple checked to make sure the power they contained could be readily dispensed into either the kinetic barriers or the main ion cannon that ran the length of the ship.

_"Three seconds."_

The quartet of engines each of the cruisers comprising the Marauders possessed retracted closely into the main body of the vessels as each of them prepared for the slingshot effect the huge mass effect engine would produce.

_"One second."_

Arcs of pure energy bathed each of the cruisers in an opulence of white light and for one brief second, each of the war machines shuddered as they were flung towards the target destination by a machine more powerful than anything else in the known galaxy.

_"We are away."_

A heartbeat later and the specks of stars they had previously seen were replaced by new ones, glistening in all colours and confirming that they had indeed arrived at their final waypoint.

"XO, status?"

"All ship report ready and able, sir." The executive officer, one Gasper Nahon, responded with the crisp professionalism and no bullshit attitude that seemed to be inherent in all men and women who shared the rank.

"Very well, move into assault formation and signal weapons free."

The officer relayed his message and Irving immediately went to work, occupying himself with managing the fleet as they moved through the various asteroid belts and open space their sensors declared safe. Special emphasis had been placed on ensuring a clear path for encroaching attack waves, ever since the disaster at Ral'dan a year prior.

He certainly didn't feel like dying at the hands of floating rocks laced with anti ship munitions and he was sure nobody else did.

"EVA, status of the Batarian fleet?" The admiral quizzed.

"The fleet does not appear to have detected our presence at this point in time, their sensor suites are currently scanning a section of the planetary body instead of our approach vector."

That was . . . odd, to say the least. Usually a sensible garrison would have at least one ship scanning the relay to avoid being caught unprepared, it was common sense really and lately, the Batarians hadn't been lacking in ways to avoid getting caught unprepared.

"Are there any other ships in system?" Irving asked as the thoughts of an ambush ran through his mind.

"Negative, our two fleets are the only starships currently in scanner range, no civilian traffic detected." One of the ship's EVA's replied, it was impossible to tell if it was the same one he'd posed the previous question to given the lack of differentiation between them.

He turned back towards the executive officer who was at that point looking at a holographic projection of the system and its celestial bodies as the information from the scanners updated the display every time something changed.

"XO, how long till we are within main weapon range?"

"Sensors indicate we'll be within accurate conventional weapons range in twelve seconds, eighteen for the ion cannon, sir."

"Good, tell fire control to pick out individual targets and commence firing when ready."

"Aye aye."

Irving moved back to the elevated command chair that was allocated to him on the bridge and watched as the first specks of super accelerated slugs shot forth towards the enemy fleet.

* * *

The GDI vessels opened fire as one, their broadsides and main armaments shot death towards the Batarians whose passive sensors had alerted them to the new arrivals.

They weren't going to be fast enough, however. The lack of a standard reaction cushion meant that they could only sluggishly attempt to manoeuvre out of the firing solutions of the heavy cruisers, not outright evade them.

The star streak effect of the projectile trails originating from the Marauder fleet vanished as they made contact with the kinetic barriers of the Matarr class cruisers, the protective shielding flickering an opaque blue as the strain of the fire drained them to breaking point.

One of the cruisers, designated target Gamma, was not as lucky its brothers. It had been simultaneously targeted by three of the human ships and predictably, it hadn't had a chance in hell.  
Storms of broadside mass accelerator fire drained its shields before the main slugs crashed into them, cracking the kinetic barriers and scything into the boxy hull. The superstructure buckled and groaned under the impacts, only to be outright torn apart as a new wave of broadside and missile fire carved its way inward, turning the war machine into an ever increasing number of scorched scrap metal segments.

The Batarians scattered like sheep whose paddock had been invaded by a pack of wolves, firing off countermeasures and performing sudden shifts in acceleration and direction to avoid the opening barrage of fire that had already claimed one of their own.

Four of them grouped together in a defensive formation and coordinated their efforts to begin delivering effective counter fire. Small bulbous turrets that ran the length of their structures swivelled to target the Marauders, lobbing shells with the characteristic blue note that accompanied the clap of their cannons.

The GDI formation broke off into groups of three, hounding down the fragmenting cluster of vessels and generally avoiding the return fire. All they needed to do was get just a bit closer to their foes, then they could bring to bear the weapon that gave humanity an edge over all species in space combat.

Their ion cannons.

* * *

"Admiral, fire control reports the enemy fleet is now in effective range of our ion cannons."

"Good, assign the _Vancouver_ and _Cherbourg_ to target Beta," His hands circled over the holographic square in front of his chair and highlighted one of the stray vessels in green.

"Obliterate it."

"Aye sir." Targeting information bounced between the three vessels and soon their correction thrusters angled the two cruisers to face target Beta. It had fled towards the safety of the planetary body and as such, lacked the protection of its brethren, placing it in a perfect position to be destroyed.

Irving switched between the deck cameras to watch as half a dozen streams of charged atoms shot towards the lone ship at light speed, their azure colouring bright enough to require the viewing camera to polarise ever so slightly and shield his eyes.

The beams cut a swath across the target like a finely tuned surgical laser. The outer hull glowed a molten white as the weapons cut through and into the crew deck, flash frying anyone inside that was caught in their path and hitting the mass effect core.  
The cruiser's barriers vanished as the energy couplings connecting them to their power source were cut, leaving the broken and battered armour as the only thing standing between the crew and the swarm of missiles that were a mere six seconds away from impact.

It was a foolish notion to think that a ship that had long gone past its useful operational period could withstand the force of a modern navy and its arsenal but Irving liked to think that there were some among his opponents who held out in hope.

He liked to imagine their faces as their comrades' ship was wrenched and blown apart by the impacts of a full bank of missiles exploding inside the interior of target Beta, their hearts sinking as the atmosphere rushed to escape into the cold vacuum of space, dragging along the various corpses and body parts caught in its wake and depositing them into Calmara's orbit.

Smug satisfaction washed over him as he switched back to the holographic map recording the battle, his fleet having wiped out four Batarian ships in the space of five minutes, him having watched two of the kills as they took place while the rest of the ships under his command had carved the enemy down to size. The lingering doubt over whether the decision to go ahead with the mission evaporated and he could already picture finishing his book back at Arcturus.

"Incoming message from the _Toronto, _sir." Irving turned to face his XO, signalling him to put the message through.

"_Marauder actual, this is _Toronto_, we need immediate assistance! We're suffering heavy concentrated fire from targets Charlie, Foxtrot and Echo, over!"_

"Understood _Toronto_, dump your reserve capacitors into your shields and pull back, I'm assigning the _Christchurch _and _Auckland_ to assist." His fingers highlighted the two ships in question and tagged the _Toronto_ as a priority one alert while designating the collaborating targets for the rest of the fleet to engage.**_  
_**  
The order was met by a shift in fire from the rest of the Marauders, their main armaments now trained solely on those seeking to cripple and destroy their compatriot. A battery of ion beams streaked across the inky blackness of space towards the enemy cruisers. Every human who had a view of the battle watched as the directed energy beams washed over their barriers, the energy partially halted while the majority bled through to bathe the ships in blue-white death.  
Gun turrets and armour boiled away, anti missile systems were reduced to singed obtrusions that glowed a radiant yellow and life pod exit points fused shut under the immense heat.

Then came the conventional follow up fire.

Their wasn't even a debate as to what would happen next, only how bad the carnage would be.  
The cruisers were torn apart by the mass accelerator rounds, their forms wrenched apart from the countless slugs connecting with their hulls until they were transformed into a grotesque testament to the merciless nature of war that littered the planet's orbit.

The crew of the _Constantinople _let out a cheer at the exhibition of unadulterated violence, the sweet feeling of impending victory left many feeling content as even though the last few rounds travelling towards the now destroyed targets had yet to impact, the Marauders were already moving to target the last remaining ships with the relentless efficiency demanded of human sailors.

Irving didn't need to focus on the battle anymore, even as the thunder of the _Constantinople_'s main gun reverberated through the ship, he was already plotting out orbital bombardment stations for each of his ships above the planet. He assigned them in a close but still fairly loose formation, one that would maximise fire over a portion of the planet's main continent and by proxy, the various industrial centers and military bases spread across it.

"Admiral, the last remaining ships are breaking apart as we speak."

"Excellent, get me a status report on _Toronto_ and signal the rest of the fleet to move into bombardment positions."

"Aye, sir."

The six other cruisers advanced into their pre arranged positions, their engines glowing a dull blue as they began to form a net over the planet while the _Dunkirk_ guarded her wounded brother and the _Constantinople_ hung back for a better command position. Their bulky forms housed enough weapons to level a city given enough time and ammunition, but that wasn't why they were here. They were targeting purely military installations, not civilian population centers.  
Helmsman corrected approach vectors, barriers were cycled and weapons were allowed to cool for a few minutes before the barrage began.

"Sir, _Toronto_ reports moderate damage to her forward bow and a dozen or so wounded, four seriously. A few shots got through before the reserve capacitors restored the barriers but they say they've got it under control." Nahon read through the list of text and images filtering onto his own screen and saw the rents in the armour of the ship. It looked bad but he knew it would take a hell of a lot more to knock out a Castle class.

"Tell the _Dunkirk_ to prep their medbay in case the _Toronto_ requires additional support. No one dies today." The day had gone too well to let someone die after the battle had ended.

He spun around to face the comm officer who was busy monitoring the various frequencies for any new developments, just in case another fleet jumped in system or someone needed assistance eliminating a groundside armoured column before it snuck into safe zone of an urban area.

"Mr. Kipling, how goes the fleet?"

"All cruisers report that they've engaged planetary targets though-" He stopped as a new message spoke in his ear, preventing him from speaking for several seconds.

"I'm sorry admiral but the _Vancouver_ is reporting a new surface contact originating from the colony's capital city, Ujon." A new stream of data reached Irving's display and he watched as a large red dot slowly rose from the simulated surface of the planet.

"Get me eyes on, and tell the _Christchurch _and_ Auckland_ to move into intercept positions."

The accumulated sensor data from the six other members of the Marauders soaked the new contact while the deck cameras collaborated to provide a visual feed of the craft.  
Irving moved from his command chair to the railing which lined the galaxy map projection, the milky way replaced by ten grainy video feeds.

What he saw was unlike anything he'd previously encountered in his career.

The ship wasn't smooth or uniform in design that was traditional among so many other navies, it was broken and just plain _wrong_.  
It looked like a tower of rock had suddenly strapped on a propulsion system and decided to become airborne, shooting itself into the sky atop a mountain of yellow flame and clouds of smoke.  
It moved through the sky of Camala with all the grace of a rusted and broken freighter, up towards the puzzled humans who were now hesitantly eyeing it from above.

"EVA, run a cross check on the design. XO, signal the fleet to form up and prepare to engage."

Both artificial and human voices sounded out their confirmations and went to their respective tasks.  
Irving didn't care who the ship belonged to, it was attempting to break out of his cordoned off planet and engage the fleet, suicidal as it may have seemed.

"No known profile match. Ship dimensions are large enough to consider it a dreadnought, however." That got Irving's heart racing, even though all his training told him that a dreadnought landing on a planet with near Earth gravity was nigh impossible, here was one doing just that.

"Signal weapons free to the _Christchurch_ and _Auckland_, don't take any chances."

The order reached the respective captains of each ship and both issued it to their crews as the new contact edged ever closer to the fleet.

* * *

Broadside turrets swivelled to engage the new target, letting loose spikes of super accelerated metal while the main cannons of their ships were fed new firing solutions. The atmosphere of Camala was filled with blue bolts of death, each impacting the kinetic barriers of the craft as it soaked them up like a sponge.

It responded in kind.

From the "top" of the ship protruded several pillars of rock and metal of uneven length like a protective cocoon. The glowing metallic disk they guarded soon spat back at the attackers as a thin beam of extremely hot liquid metal shot forth towards the _Auckland _and_ Christchurch.  
_The engines of both ships radiated a brilliant blue as they moved to evade the sudden lance of scalding yellow as it covered the distance between the different vessels.

Klaxons rang throughout the _Auckland _as the beam scythed through the kinetic barriers like they didn't even exist, surgically dissecting the craft as it travelled its length and boiling alive any unfortunate soul it came into contact with.  
Flames jutted out through the exposed rents, missile banks detonated in their holding compartments and the entire craft broke apart as the beam came into contact with the drive core, detonating it and killing all aboard in series of capacious explosions that ran across the whole ship.

There was no heroic last act of defiance, no last message from the _Auckland_, it simply ceased to be.

The _Christchurch_ suffered the same fate as the attackers redirected their efforts towards the hastily manoeuvring vessel and cut through her armoured frame like a scalding hot knife through butter. The ship managed to let loose a volley from her missile banks before her destruction, the ordinance she had launched doing little damage as they were sliced apart by several smaller beams that jutted out from the vessels core.

The rest of the Marauders watched in horror as two of their sister ships were destroyed in the span of little over twenty seconds.

* * *

_Constantinople_'s CIC had burst into a flurry of action the moment the _Auckland_ had been hit, redirecting those of the fleet who'd been assigned to orbital bombardment to engage the hostile ship that had claimed two of their number and try and exact revenge for the lives lost.  
Irving watched as the ramshackle looking vessel picked off those who were too sluggish to respond to the new threat and grew in rage for every second his men continued to die, their screams echoing over the bridge's loud speakers.

"XO, signal the _Dunkirk _and_ Toronto_ to form up on our flank, attack formation, now!" His didn't bother containing the sudden rush of emotion he felt, he just wanted to kill the bastards, to do _something_ other than stand around like a helpless child.

The two ships ceased their exchange of wounded and powered on to either side of the _Constantinople, _their main armaments spitting shells at the attacker all the while. The three ships moved into a wedge formation and drove toward the craft which had just claimed two more of their unit, leaving the three cruisers as the sole remaining GDI ships in system.

Beams of intense white light shot forth from their bodies, their ion cannons joined by dozens of broadside turrets that, in a chorus of anger and hate, shot tungsten death towards the supposed dreadnought.  
The beams criss crossed the expanse of rock and metal that comprised the enemy hull as they bled through the kinetic barriers and into the ship proper.

They didn't penetrate like they had with the batarian ships, however, merely raking the armour and causing it to deform slightly from the energy they conveyed. The kinetic barriers of craft held up against the combined salvoes of the three human cruisers and it reoriented itself to face them, diminishing its profile and building up another blast from its devastating main weapon.

"EVA, dump the reserve capacitors into the ion cannons, now!" He needed the only weapons that seemed to be doing anything to his enemy back online or his formation would meet the same fate as the rest of their compatriots.

"_Toronto, _divert all power to your shields or they-"

His message was cut off as the yellow beam shot forth from the enemy ship, glowing a molten yellow as it hit the _Toronto_'s forward section dead center, cutting through the entire stretch of the ship's compartments, internal systems and armour plating before emerging out the aft section of the cruiser.

_Toronto_ spilt apart as the beam cut it in two, dismembering it and allowing all to see its inner workings, scorched and fused with other sections or crewmembers like Zeus had let loose a mighty lightning bolt of death into their midst.

"Ion cannons at eighty five percent."

"Fire!"

The order had been similarly echoed by the _Dunkirk_'s captain and the ion beams shot forth from their ships towards the enemy that was now little over three hundred kilometres away, practically a knife fight for the humans.  
The beams washed over the kinetic barriers but only transferred a small amount of their charged atoms through, the energy output considerably weaker than previous salvoes.  
Irving watched this in horror as the discharge of liquid metal from the enemy combatant fired not in one continuous stream, but in multiple, rapid fire bursts that streaked towards both vessels in retaliation.

The barriers proved just as unable to cope with the onslaught of the smaller beams as they had when the device had fired in its single shot mode, collapsing as the outer plating turrets and spinal cannons of the _Constantinople_ and _Dunkirk_ were fried and cut apart by concentrated plasma, effectively neutering the combat capabilities of both ships.

It was at that point that Rear Admiral Walter Irving gave the order to abandon the two remaining ships of the Eighth Marauder Raiding Contingent, even as the one responsible for the death of his men fired once more, sweeping across both ships and morphing them into broken and crippled hulks that merely added to the list of debris gathering around the planet of Camala.

* * *

The insect like vessel slowed as it finished swotting the last of the human warships aside, now no longer assaulted by the arrogant life forms that knew not their place.  
Powerful scanner systems swept the ruined forms of the various ships, both batarian and human as it despatched the minions which had up until that point, waited patiently for their master's orders.

Wherever their master directed, the minions went, their evil eyes glowing crimson as they searched for life pods and intact subsystems left behind by the filth that had challenged them.  
When the few life pods that had managed to be launched were found, they were towed back by the minions to their master where they awaited a fate worse than death.

When the master was satisfied the task had been completed to its preferred degree of thoroughness, it recalled its minions and set out to the systems mass relay, where it ventured to a destination unknown.

* * *

_Codex - Warships - GDI Castle Class cruiser_

_Designed in 2150 and introduced into service in 2155, the Castle Class Heavy Cruiser stands at 450 meters in length and is designed with GDI's modular flexibility and force projection as its primary strong points. Featuring the ability to be able to be configured for various different operations, such as planetary assault and disaster relief, it has been used as the primary workhorse of GDI since the end of the Second Contact War._

_Sporting both an ion cannon and traditional mass accelerator as its main armaments, as well as dozens of broadside guns and anti ship missile batteries, the Castle Class is built to be able to be able to comfortably overpower ships of a similar weight class employed by both Council and non Council races, due to humanity's lower amount of recruitable manpower and lack of allies when compared to the Council races.  
Its defensive protection include strong kinetic barriers, augmented by reserve capacitors, as well as multiple anti missile/fighter systems to neutralize hostile fighter craft and their disruptor torpedo payloads while multiple redundant power generating and life support crew collaborate to keep the crew alive for as long as possible during engagements.  
__Ablative Armour is also a standard implementation due to the proliferation of GARDIAN weapon systems throughout the galaxy, "boiling away" when it comes into contact with directed energy weapons and rendering them ineffective.__  
_

_The Castle Class has quickly risen in numbers to comprise the bulk of GDI's navy, with over sixty percent of all human combat vessels being a variant of the design. GDI currently employs the majority of its considerably large naval assets to both the protection of outer colony worlds from hostile organisations/states and the ongoing offensive operations being conducted against the Batarian Hegemony._

_Despite the impressive capabilities of the Castle Class, it is not without weaknesses._  
_Like every other GDI naval vessel its FTL drive lags behind the council races in terms of efficiency, meaning that GDI worlds requiring naval assistance often receive reinforcements after the attacking party has fled or has been destroyed at heavy cost to garrison forces._  
_Its design also lacks maneuverability, favoring heavy firepower and protection instead of speed and agility._

* * *

**_Authors notes:_****_  
_**  
Why yes kiddies, this IS another CNC/ME story that's popped up into this section of  
Blame my weak willpower and the works of Peptuck and CharNobyl for me writing this story but this is my foray into the world of Peptucks Renegade alt:universe.  
The next chapter will be somewhat cloak and dagger but will also have some action for GDI's marine corps so if you like what you've seen so far then stick around.  
**  
****Disclaimer**: While I am using the the Renegade universe as a basis for this story I have consulted with CharNobyl and Peptuck for permission to use it.  
However until Peptuck says otherwise this story is not officially considered canon.

**_Update:_** The entire chapter has now been redone to a level that I believe to be of acceptable quality, the previous incarnation was just plain terrible and I apologise.


	2. Hell Bound

_**Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.**_

_**John Donne**_

_February 2182_

_**"30 seconds**_**_!"_**

Smoky trails and blazes of orange rose from the planet below, its vast expanses of green and blue marred by spots of red and grey all over the main continent.

Lying in wait above those skies in orbit over the contested Batarian planet of Kyran were the anxious combat troops of the GDI 79th heavy infantry battalion.

Men and women who had taken part in several similar operations to date looked on at video feeds of the battles taking place at that very moment.

They had been waiting for the past two days for the authorization to drop into the maelstrom of battle that was taking place on the planet's surface below.

Since initiating hostilities over six months ago the GDI troops had suffered setback after setback.  
The dogged and unconventional defensive measures that the batarian soldiers had implemented had stalled progress to almost a standstill despite the attacker's quickly acquired dominance of space.

That was to change today.

Sergeant James Vega stood clad in his heavy zone power armour, performing a last minute check on his heavy werewolf rifle and its heavy rail gun module.

The massive weapon smoothly unfurling and then repacking from its compact to operational forms and then back again without so much as a sound of disagreement.

James Vega was an already imposing slab of meat when he wasn't in his armour but when wearing it his already impressive figure was augmented to over seven feet in height making things slightly cramped in the launch compartment of the GDS _Sydney_.

Several other members of his squad were going through the same routine, if only out of habit.  
One of the figures left arm glowed purple, the air around it distorted by the mass effect field that its user was generating.

_"Looks like we'll get to say hello to plenty of the natives today, so_ _fifty credits say I get a kill before our esteemed sergeant."  
_The biotic field disappeared as its creator turned to address the other GDI Soldiers in the cramped launch compartment.

"_I don't need to rewrite the laws of physics to kill a batarian Essex, but if it makes you feel any better I can let you back out now so that you don't feel too bad when I beat your ass." _  
Though it wasn't visible through his face plate James felt a smug smirk creep across his lips as he brought up his werewolf for psychological effect.

"_You say that now Vega but we'll see who's come out on top when we look over the helmet cams"_

_"__**15 seconds**__!"_

The announcement cut short any reply as all thirteen members of Delta squad clambered into their deployment vehicles.  
The hiss of the pod being pressurized made its way through his suits audio receptors as it's computer network connected with the pods guidance and life support systems.

During the Third Tiberium war zone troopers being deployed from orbital stations had to enter the battle via twelve man drop pods.

Anti air defences since then had improved to the point that this was no longer a viable way to deploy troops without having a significant number slaughtered by dedicated AA.  
Now troopers were deployed in single man pods landing in localised, but spread out, clusters to significantly reduce casualties while dropping.

_"__**5 seconds!**__"_

With the final data for the landing zones downloaded and accepted by the guidance computer, all that James Vega could do now was wait.

_"__**Mark!**__"_

The loud _thunk_ of the pod detaching from the Sydney and the firing of thrusters marked the beginning of the descent into the battle below as hundreds of similar individuals began the same journey.

* * *

_"Hammer will be inbound soon, ETA five minutes Colonel."_The monotone voice crackled over his helmets inbuilt communication link signalling that his time to move was now.

"_Roger that Admiral, we'll try to roll out the red carpet for them"_His thick British accent undercutting the intended humour of the statement.

"_Understood, good luck Colonel."_

This particular area of Kyran had seen some of the heaviest fighting on the planet.  
The Batarian defenders had been fighting to keep the areas spaceport from falling into GDI hands.

Not that it mattered anyway, the batarians had no spacecraft capable of rescuing or reinforcing them and the GDI marines were receiving supplies via their space based heavy lift cargo craft making the facility next to worthless.  
What mattered was that the batarians had decided for whatever reason to stand and fight and that suited him just fine.

He paced the dusty and dry command bunker, milling over the fighting that his unit had seen the past few weeks before the rumbling of an artillery impact brought his thoughts back to reality.

"_They're ready for you sir" _He thanked the comm officer before placing his hand to his helmet.

"_Alright ladies, it looks like the bog we've been fighting through these past few weeks has decided to become an open road, we've just got to deal with the few bumps that have cropped up. Our angels are arriving soon and it's our job to keep the Hegemony's minions from noticing them until such a point as to where their tiny brains are rendered non functional, understood?"_

A list of affirmatives from the leaders of the battalion elements registered in his head set, every one of them knowing that they were now past the point of no return.

"_Jericho battalion, advance!"_The three words ringed like cannon shots, jumping every soldier listening into within dug in positions the earth began to rumble and shake as the engines of seventy ton war machines barked into life.  
The first to move were the camouflaged Predator tanks, their armoured forms playing host to the large bulk of their rail guns and the heavy armour that protected their crews.

They were joined by the quick moving men and women of the rest of Jericho battalion, men and women who had been fighting on Kyran for close to four months, their lessons thus far being hard and unkind.

While the frontal elements swung into the attack several juggernauts vectored in the firing solutions being fed to them and began to pound suspected anti air batteries behind the batarian lines.

"_All elements, be advised of possible enemy mines and booby traps as well as ambushes from hidden positions in the jungle and hillside"_

This area of Kyrans main southern continent boasted mild jungle growth and the occasional plain of grass to boot but now it had cleared up into grass hills as the GDI forces reached the outskirts of the landmasses main city.

For the past four weeks the defenders had been concealing and fortifying their positions here while mobile elements harassed the human spearheads. They had nowhere else to go except into the city but that would mean abandoning the few functioning facilities that still stood in the spaceport to their rear.

The juggernaut fire was now testing that decision.

"_Jericho, this is actual, expect contact any minute now."_The monotone voice refusing to yield any hint of emotion as it made its way throughout the warning flickered out of existence as a barrage of fire erupted from a nearby ridge line.

Roughly five hundred meters ahead of the GDI troops, sheets of camo netting were removed to reveal the defensive positions that had been waiting for them.

A heavy assault gun began spewing hundreds of projectiles at the advancing infantry while still more began firing heavier slugs at the advancing armour units.

Half a dozen riflemen were cut down before the rest took cover behind the advancing predator tanks, the latter now letting loose on the defensive emplacements with their rail guns.

Inside the predator _Indomitable_, Lieutenant Andrew Garner calmly called out targets for both his crew and the other tanks supporting the advance.

_"Target, assault gun position, eleven O'clock! Four hundred meters!"_

"Identified!"

The voice of his gunner also spotting their next kill came through loud and clear over the noise of the tanks interior.

"Fire!"

The _thud_of the main gun reverberated through the armoured shell as its payload traversed the distance in an instant, dismembering an unfortunate batarian and making another three an unidentifiable mess of body parts in an explosion of dirt, blood and weapon components.

"_Target is down, scanning for new contacts."_

Two months of near constant battle had made the predator a mess of its original components and rapidly fabricated replacement parts.  
However _Indomitable_had managed to tough out some of the worst resistance that had been encountered so far.

Through his targeting scope Garner noticed that a clump of hill had been tagged as a priority target.  
When he saw a squad of infantry become engulfed in fire by a salvo from said hill he understood why.

_"Enemy emplacement one o'clock, elevation twenty three degrees, three nine zero meters!"_His targeting computer transferred data to the gunners console allowing him to see what Garner saw.

"_Identified!"_The same calm and well-oiled routine repeated itself once more.  
_  
_"_Fire!"_

Power flowed from the tanks mass effect core through the outer coils towards the massive weapon.  
A quarter of a second later the mass of the projectile was accelerated by the electromagnetic rails within the barrel, propelling it at over five times the speed of sound towards the camouflaged position.

The rail gun was primarily designed for taking on an opponent's heaviest vehicles, not reinforced bunkers.  
The heavy frontal slab of reinforced material supplemented by kinetic barriers could withstand a shot from at least three predators simultaneously, It could not, however, withstand the five others railgun rounds and numerous MOD-3 rockets that were now whistling towards it.

The rounds impacted. The kinetic barriers stopped three and partially halted another.  
The remaining round travelled towards its target with a breathtaking amount of ease, punching a hole in the central firing slit of the fortification and making a mess of anyone in its path.

The bunkers recharging kinetic barriers weren't fast enough to stop the numerous missiles that delivered the coup de grace for its occupants, even as another bunker obliterated their point of origin.

"_Good kill good kill. Stand by, receiving transmission from the fleet, gunner fire at will"_

The pace of the advance was keeping to schedule but it would soon come under fire from further dug in positions and possibly artillery. The latter would be even worse if the advance became bogged down.

"_FleetComm to Jericho company, we have angels inbound, ETA two minutes. Orbital artillery is unable to provide fire support due to some heavy groundside interference but we're working on it, win this one and you'll have earned that leave you wanted, FleetComm out."_

Now the trump cards came out to play as the stalemate that had played out across the front was now ready to be broken.

* * *

"_We're encountering heavy resistance down the center, sir, frontline squads are requesting fire support from Juggernaut units._"

The batarians were now wide awake and grinding the infantry and armour to the standstill which had characterised the groundside warfare thus far.

"_Tell them to tough it out, we have to keep the anti-air units behind the lines suppressed until our angels arrive, order the predators to provide cover fire in the meantime."_

Normally GDI would use a combination of artillery, commando teams, pinpointed orbital fire and electronic warfare units to nullify a defenders anti aircraft ability.

However due to the nature of the terrain that comprised the hilly and overgrown outskirts of the city they were ordered to secure as well as counter jamming from the batarians, those options were not guaranteed to give the results needed for this offensive.

So they had to improvise.

"_Orcas are coming in now, requesting permission to access our targeting telemetry info"_

This was what a twenty second century war machine excelled at, nay this was what a twenty second century _GDI_war machine excelled at. Raw, unforgiving, coordinated firepower.

"_Granted, see if they can't hammer the bastards to our front and give us a bit of leeway."_

GDI's shock and awe approach had managed to secure them many victories throughout the organizations history but the constant harassment and ambushes during the last few weeks had whittled down many frontline units, Jericho battalion included.

The defense was akin to what the Brotherhood of Nod had employed during the three Tiberium wars, the comparison not lost on the Colonel.

The tactical situation had changed upon meeting the static emplacements they now faced.  
Now the targets had been revealed and allow their bigger guns to flex their respective muscles upon targets they knew they could hit.

From within the command bunker the roar of multiple turbofans became progressively louder until they were joined by the sound of ripple firing high explosive missiles.

The Orca gunship was one of the most potent symbols of the Initiatives might, its legacy dating back almost two hundred years to the first Tiberium war on earth.

Now a dozen were unleashing hellfire upon the batarian positions as the GDI troops slogged through the defenders crossfire, the hundreds of tan coloured marines hopping from cover to cover while their tanks acted as sponges for the incoming fire.

Two hundred meters in front of the advancing human troops a bunker complex was blown apart by the combined arms of the approaching predator tanks and the freshly arrived gunships.

Two other bunkers were dismantled via rocket barrage before batarian SAM's revealed their presence to the orca pilots.

Two missiles managed to lock on to an orca peeling off from a fresh attack run, covering the short range in seconds leaving the pilot with no time to evade.  
The first missile failed to penetrate the crafts kinetic barriers, merely depleting them.  
The second one pierced the now vulnerable armour plating and lodged itself in the crafts center mass before engulfing the orca in fire as it detonated.

The sight of one of their friends littering the battlefield below with its broken remnants caused the remaining orca's to break off into evasive maneuvers, deploying flares and attempting to distort missile tracking with electronic countermeasures.

A dozen more missiles shot out from the batarian positions, claiming four more orca's and narrowly failing to destroy a fifth before the squadron managed to safely retreat with their payloads expended.

Action and reaction.

He discarded the data feeds as he brought up a 3D holographic map.

"_What's the ETA on our angels?"_The incoming surprise would either make or break this stalemate.

"_ETA fifty seconds sir."_Good, let them bring down hell from their chariots of fire.

* * *

Ten thousand feet above the battle below, hundreds of tiny specks littered the sky.  
Anyone who was uncertain of their nature quickly had their doubts erased as their forms quickly came into view.  
Some were larger than others, their bigger bulk indicating they were carrying something far more massive than their counterparts.

The specks were becoming bigger now, their forms revealing previously unidentifiable details such as the white insignia of an eagle on their sides as the flames caused by orbital entry gave it an almost surreal appearance.

Sergeant James Vega held onto the protective harness that kept him in place with his zone armours "fingers" while the inbuilt climate control struggled to cope with the high temperatures caused by breaking through the atmosphere, hence the term "hot drop".

A loud roar from outside the armoured shell indicated that the pods retro rockets had activated, slowing him from a fatal velocity to one that would merely impact the ground and crush light vehicles and/or anything else beneath it.

Many alien races made use of drop ships and shuttle craft to land troops in hostile terrain but this had been deemed insufficient for GDI's offensive doctrine of "Aggression, Mobility, Momentum, Shock."  
At least, in the beginning stages of a planetary offensive.

Thus drop pods were redeveloped from previous models employed since the Third Tiberium War to deploy troops where they were needed, when they were needed, regardless of how long the conflict had been going on.

It did have drawbacks though, mainly the fact that the pods lacked maneuverability in flight making them relatively easy targets for overlapping anti aircraft defences.  
Sketchy Intel on enemy AA positions had made previous drops a cruel but necessary nightmare for those who had to experience them.

Minor adjustments were made to the direction of the pod until finally the retro rockets cut out, signalling that he now had just a few moments before the solid metal construct made contact with whatever was below it.

Hard.

* * *

Private Carrack had been serving for eight months in the batarian military; five of them had been spent here fighting the human troops that now threatened the world he and thousands like him had been entrusted to defend.

His main duty for the past half hour was ferrying medical supplies and other equipment from bunker to bunker while avoiding the occasional artillery shell and other ordinance that tried to make his acquaintance.

Now however his field of view went dark as several shadows began appearing over the ground lying before his feet.

He looked up to the sky facing the sun, his helmets face plate polarizing to compensate for the increased sun glare.

His expression turned from curious, to puzzled, to horrified in the space of three seconds as the information from dozens of intelligence packets regarding previous battles registered in his brain.

Those intelligence packets were the last things to register in his brain as his form was crushed to a bloody pulp under the force of a three hundred kilogram metal shell impacting his body at the velocity of a cruisers broadside mass accelerator.

Private Carrack was not the only one to die in this way as the scene repeated itself dozens of time within the surrounding area.

Drop pods landed on overturned cars, supply crates, the odd batarian and anything else unlucky enough to be caught in their path.  
Their bulky forms impacting with enough force to create fissures and craters near their impact sites.

A few seconds after they landed the sides of the drop pods shot off their hinges to reveal their deadly cargo.  
Pods disgorged the zone troopers that had been lying within, their heavy werewolf rifles unfurling into place as their users began to open fire upon those that had earned their wrath.

The Angels had arrived.

* * *

James Vegas' werewolf had performed flawlessly since the drop, its rail gun module bisecting a batarian soldier with a well placed shot to his torso before swapping to a heavy machine gun module and cutting down two of his compatriots who had been unlucky enough to be in its sights.

He was not alone. Hundreds of pods were now landing on anything within the landing zone, their occupants spewing hot death upon anyone that could be remotely classed as hostile.

Within the haze of smoke and tracers which were now filling the air, Vega's HUD tagged a group of Troopers as those belonging to Delta Squad, their bulky forms adorned with their own personal paint jobs and decorations.

Vega made a bee-line for the squads rally point, narrowly avoiding a stray mortar shot in the process.

"_Vega! Glad you could finally join us for this little escapade!" _The gruff voice of squad leader Captain Toni  
snapped over the audio connection, a mix of annoyance and amusement at Vega's arrival.

Vega voiced a quick reply before falling in with the rest of his heavily armoured comrades, the surrounding battle now an afterthought as their mission details were fed to them.

"_Alright, here's the situation. The batarians have been hiding behind their new jamming towers while their bunkers and long range AA positions hold off our advance, our job is to destroy one of those towers so that Jericho Battalion can advance with orbital support. The 79__th__ will then link up with Jericho at the city outskirts and assist in clearing these suburbs" _  
His omni tool glowed orange and a 3D map of the local terrain became highlighted.

"_After that is done we hold position until the 9__th__ and 29__th__ battalions with their urban assault teams take over and move into the city proper, are we clear?"  
_A solid chorus of "hoorahs" answered in return to his query.

"_Epsilon and Centauri squads are also going after towers B and C while the rest of the battalion hits the bunkers from the rear, so let's not stand on ceremony here. Squad, move out!_

Delta squad had been involved in five similar drops in the past, each one being brutal and bloody leading to the battalion having to be replenished often with new members. This drop was different; they had been placed in a gap between the defensive lines in the hilly outskirts and the city proper with the rest of the defenders hunkering down around the jamming towers.

The defenders had been too preoccupied to mount an effective response to the landing when the Zone Troopers were at their most vulnerable. It was a mistake they would soon regret.

Delta broke off from the main body of troopers towards what was once a medical clinic, its frame demonstrating the mass production mindset of the Hegemony despite being mostly bombed out from blind fired artillery.

Protruding from the main body of the structure was a carefully camouflaged tower covered in urban camo netting and jamming dishes, with several figures clad in protective suits moving what could only be heavy weapons into fortified positions.

Delta advanced cautiously, ducking behind several destroyed transport vehicles and in between heavy foliage in order to remain undetected for as long as possible before their suit readings became impossible to conceal.

"_Hey James, you think we can get the drop on them with all this going on?" _The hushed voice Vega's squad mate Nicky made its way to the sergeant's ears via the squad's personal comm link, a hint of concern noticeable.

Vega angled his heads skywards to grab a view of the back and forth exchange of mass accelerator fire, the greatest volume of fire coming from the GDI lines.

"_Just gotta play it cool Nicky, just like every other time. If things go sideways we can always just use that toy of yours and have some fun." _  
Vega gestured towards the personal ion cannon attachment on his friend's werewolf rifle and the destructive firepower it could dispense, if only for a single shot.

"_Either way we get to do what we do best" _A sadistic smile crossed the sergeant's face behind his polarized face plate.

* * *

Inside the command post that housed jammer tower K-051, the atmosphere was one of concentrated frustration.

The Batarian defenders were guarding a target of obvious importance that they had been assigned to just a few days prior, when the GDI attackers had slogged their way through the meat grinder and into range of the city.

Not that Corporal Grelle was complaining, they were well supplied and well equipped compared to the rest of the defenders holding the line a few miles to the west of them.

His twenty six man platoon had been fortifying this position whenever the constant barrages ceased or shifted to new targets.  
They had seen the massive deployment of space born GDI troops fifteen minutes earlier and could only curse as they were only opposed by the odd burst of AA and SAM fire.  
_  
"Heads up! Movement at ten o'clock, one five zero meters!" _Grelle flashback was suddenly halted as he instinctively shifted the aim on his assault gun towards the new contacts just in time to see two of his fellow soldiers get dismembered by the impact of at least three fast moving slugs, their hard suits unable to stop the sudden impacts.

"_Contact! Fire at will!" _

The order was meaningless as Grelle's fingers depressed the trigger on the heavy turret, it's dual cannons poured out hundreds rounds to the general area of the aggressors.  
One vehicle which had been overturned but not destroyed was engulfed in flames as its mass effect core took one round too many, sending pieces of its body flying in all directions.

Several suspected targets flashed over his helmets HUD as he doused fire over those that had clumped together with quick repeating bursts, the rounds flying forward from his mounted weapon.

Alarms suddenly rang in his ears as the assault guns info display registered a weapon overheat alert.  
This should have been impossible with the controlled bursts he was employing.

"_Stupid BSA piece of crap!" _His Omni Tool blazed orange as he tried to cancel the false alarm which stubbornly refused to let the assault gun fire.

His efforts were cut short at the sound of breaking glass, indicating that his positions kinetic barriers had failed.  
Grelle instinctively ducked behind the armoured body plate attached to the side of the gun as several rounds made contact with it and the surrounding cover of his position.

"_Position 2B, where the hell is that supporting fire? We've got Zoners advancing on us!" _  
Grelle was about to voice a reply before a large flash of white suddenly erupted in his face before his helmet polarised to compensate.  
The whiteness subsided a second later as his vision returned to normal. Or not.  
The forward section of the assault gun was now a glowing red conglomeration of molten slag, it's structure having been flash cooked to super high temperatures.

Grelle recoiled almost immediately, trying to move away from the now useless weapon before he was picked apart by incoming fire, and into cover as rounds pockmarked the terrain around him.

He raised his arm to his helmet and in an effort to inform the rest of the platoon of the new development and how they were now without supporting fire.  
That was before he remembered where his right hand had been at the time of the blast, the memory causing him to look down at was now a cauterized stump of body armour and seared flesh.

"_What the-"_

For the second time that day Grelle recoiled, if only for a second, but that was long enough for an accelerated slug to disintegrate what was his head.

* * *

"_Gunner down" _The position that had been previously pinning them down ceased to exist after it had been introduced to Nicky's ion cannon attachment and the squad's resident sharpshooter.

"_I like genesis beer sarge, just in case you didn't know what to buy me at the bar when we get back"_

"Yeah yeah Milque, just keep our friends busy and I might consider it"

He would never let him have the satisfaction of admitting it but Milque was one hell of a sniper, if a little cold at times.

Vega keyed a command into his werewolf, the bulky weapon swapping out the heavy machine gun module for the its rail gun attachment as he raised himself out of cover and lined up on trio of batarians taking cover behind a slab of instacrete.

The weapon surged backwards as the fin stabilized slug raced forward, its users aim ringing true as the instacrete barrier broke apart and one of those hiding behind it felt his chest cave in.

The others were knocked back out of cover and cut down with ruthless efficiency, their kinetic barriers incapable of protecting against the multiple projectiles meant to kill them.

"_Suppressing fire on that rooftop! Essex, Vega, move up!"  
_The always annoyed voice of Captain Toni cutting across the squad comm channel.

"_Race ya to the door Vega!" _

"_Essex wait-" _His squad mate suddenly lurched forward as his jump pack activated, propelling him across the sixty or so meters between his position and the bombed out door of the clinic.

Instinct took over as Vega ignited his own jump pack, determined to not let his friend die due to a lack of common sense.

Three seconds later Essex landed, his werewolf clattering in one arm while a biotic shock wave thumped forward from the other.

The batarians in his path made the leap of logic that the huge figure now a few feet away from them _may_have been a bigger threat than those firing at them in the distance and shifted fire accordingly.

Essex saw his suits barriers drop to seventy percent before the shock wave reached those who were in his path, knocking the unfortunate ones a few feet into the air and others off balance.

His Werewolf spewed death at the freshly exposed targets, tearing through their barriers and hardsuits with comical ease.

He turned to face the two remaining batarians, intending to cut them down before they could regain their footing and threaten him once more.

The center sections of their bodies exploded in a bloody mess before he could as a loud thump sounded nearby.

"_That's two for one, beat that pretty boy!" _Vega's form quickly burst through the clinics front door followed quickly by Essex who hadn't had time to voice a reply.

"_Up top!" _Both raised their rifles in unison and sprayed lead at three batarians who were shifting positions to meet the newcomers, all three met the same fate as their brothers who lay outside as their hardsuits were torn open.

"_There's the transmitter! Flatten it!" _  
The large mess of wires and vid consoles erupted in sparks and metal fragments as grenades and heavy slugs pelted its center mass before it's computers and other electronics were rendered non functional.

_"Spread out, you take top" _The two armoured giants smashed open doors and destroyed anything and anyone that could be regarded as dangerous before their comms flickered to life.

"_Sergeant, report"_

"Transmitter is down and interior is clear, no new contacts sir"

"Good, last few tangos are down, courtesy of Milque. We're moving into secure the clinic and surrounding area"

"Copy that, transmitting new info to command"

Now things would move a bit more smoothly.

* * *

The cold intensiveness of space cared little for the eight GDI cruisers in orbit above Kyran or for what purpose they had in being there.

It didn't care when tiny data packets made their way through the atmosphere towards the orbiting wolf pack and into their command systems.

It didn't care when they angled their broadside mass accelerators towards unseen targets on the planet below.

It didn't care when those broadsides began spewing slugs meant for combating ships at the blazes of orange on the surface.

Those in control of those ships may have cared, but it did not.

* * *

Lieutenant Andrew Garner's view of the battle field suddenly exploded as the targets that been previously marked on his HUD vanished in a geyser of dirt, flame and presumably vaporized body parts.

A smile of content appeared over his lips as the incoming fire almost completely vanished.

His comm link crackled to life as more salvoes from space hit presumed enemy bunkers and SAM sites.

_"Jericho actual to all battalion elements, orbital support is now online, advance to city outskirts and annihilate all defensive positions with extreme prejudice"_

That was an order he could follow.

"_Driver, punch it, I want to be in the suburbs before this beautiful day is over"_

The jolt of acceleration and roar of _Indomitable_'s engines signaled the new pace of advance that they were going to be enjoying for the time being.

"_Third company is already on top of position Charlie four and reports minimal enemy resistance."  
_The Commander of the predator _Ask Not_relayed the refreshing change of news to Garner who voiced his acknowledgment.

"_The Seventy Ninth should have dealt with the rear bunkers by now and be forming up at rally point bravo, let's not keep them waiting"_

A wave of tan swept over the hills as rifleman, predators, coyotes and other units constituting the GDI advance moved forward, frustration turning to adrenaline as they powered through the gap in the defensive line.

Occasional explosions and flying body parts spewed up from the ground as grenades, mass accelerators, rail guns and just about everything else that humanity had in its arsenal cut through the now retreating batarian defenders.

Garner relished it.

For too long they had been bogged down by the batarians, now they could cut loose and flatten their opposition.

* * *

Delta squad paced its way towards rally point bravo, only stopping engage the occasional retreating clump of batarians before continuing on with the support of a newly arrived wolverine.

The constant _thud, thud_ of its armoured feet making contact with the road leading into the city made a silent approach impossible.  
Not that it mattered with some two and a half thousand angry marines and zone troopers heading in the same direction anyway.

Inside the chest of the wolverine resided its pilot, Corporal Todd Flint, his array of sensors and outer cameras fed into an overall big picture that comprised his HUD and allowed him to see the battlefield before him.

_"Ready when you are sir"_

"Copy that, we'll advance towards those two habitation modules there."

The wolverines EVA marking the buildings that Toni had pointed out

"_You erase anyone who decides to take a shot at us while we move, understood corporal?"_

"Crystal clear sir"

Toni didn't need to say anything, Delta was already moving by the time he had finished speaking, their bulky forms ducking in and out of cover as they moved between the debris strewn upon the road.

Vega eyed up the two story apartment complex. Its shell reeked of mass production despite the damage done by overshoots of the juggernaut barrage but that didn't mean it couldn't house a few pissed off batarians out for blood.

Every few yards the squad advanced the methodical _thud_of the wolverine's feet propelling it forward could be felt through the cracked pavement, a healthy reminder that it was watching over the squad with its auto cannon and grenade launcher.

The Zone troopers were close to the first apartment complex, two dozen meters away when the two windows on the upper story were both exploded by grenades and torn apart by auto cannon fire.

_"Cover!"_Toni yelled out over the comms as the zone troopers grabbed cover wherever it was available.

The fire from the wolverine cut out a few seconds later, the two windows now joined in one big smoking hole.  
No fire came from the rooftop however, or any of the windows from either building.

"_Report corporal." _Toni was clearly annoyed

"_Sensors picked up something moving inside, didn't want to chance it."_

"A little more warning would be appreciated."

"Copy that sir"

It felt like a bad omen but they pushed on towards the first building, covering all approaches as they hopped from cover to cover.

Vega reached the entrance, stacking up to the door alongside Essex while noting how tall their forms were compared to the height of the door.

"_Go!"  
_  
To say that Essex kicked in the door would be putting it lightly, crushed would have been more appropriate, its form bending and collapsing as his power armour destroyed it.

Vega's HUD scanned the confines of the apartment, making sure that no booby traps or any other nasty surprises were present as they entered.

Unusually the complex was empty with only a few overturned tables and discarded items lying about but other than that, it was relatively pristine compared to the scorched wreck which was the upper level.

"_All clear here"_

"Right, let's head back outsi-"

His words were cut short as an explosion outside shook the building, causing the duo to break out into a rush for the entrance.

As the world outside came into view the scene that greeted them was...surprising to say the least.

The second apartment complex was ablaze, its dull grey form turning to crispy crimson cinders as the material burned. Vega found the culprit when he looked back at his squad.

Alongside the squad now resided two predator tanks and a dozen tan marines, the former's glowing barrels indicated that they were responsible for the recent remodeling of the building opposite.

From the top of the one marked _Indomitable _emerged what Vega could only assume was the tank commander, his dirtied uniform complimenting his scratched helmet.

"_Captain Toni? I'm Lieutenant Garner, we've been ordered secure this area for the rest of Jericho battalion."_

"We've?"

A hint of disbelief escaping Toni's lips.

"_Yes sir, your squad and my tank have been ordered to hold here and by Tuesday we'll be heading off world for some R and R once we're relieved."_

"Looks like we better get to work then lieutenant."

A smile creeping across both men's faces.

"_Sir yes sir!" _A grin from ear to ear upon Garners face as he crept back inside _Indomitable's _turret, prepared to finish this particular task with newly found vigor.

* * *

_**Codex Entry: Human Zone Armour**_

_**The lineage of Zone Armour dates back as far the First Tiberium War on Earth that lasted from 1999 to 2003. (Earth standard calendar)  
The first prototype for a mass producible model of power armour was developed by renowned scientist Ignatio Mobius with it taking on the name of its creator.**_

_**The "Mobius assault suit" bore two pieces of fruit, the XO power suit which would go on to become the distinct Wolverine light walker and the Zone family of infantry power armour.**_  
_**Since the discovery and integration of Mass Effect technology, Zone armour has become deadlier than ever with its wearers often described as "walking tanks" or "human krogans"**_

_**Zone armour is bulkier and heavier than standard armour, due to the various systems employed and that each suit is powered meaning that the user's strength, agility and reflexes are heightened to make him/her more effective in combat.**_

_**The increased bulk of the suit also means heavier protection.**_

_**Each suit of Zone armour is crafted out of the same materials as Mammoth tank armour plating and has stronger kinetic barriers than standard infantry armour.  
This allows the user to carry large amounts of firepower into battle, though the loadout is different across the multiple branches.**_

_**Two designs of armour are commonplace. The Trooper and Raider designations.**_

_**The Trooper design is used mainly in heavy offensive/defensive operations with its offensive and defensive capabilities being geared towards delivering maximum damage upon foes and protection for its wearer.**_  
_**It is employed across almost all branches of the GDI armed forces.**_

_**Troopers have been noted as being dangerous even when lacking a ranged weapon, a notable example of this being Master Sergeant Jon Willis and his fellow zone troopers.  
During the second contact war Willis and his comrades charged into a company of attacking Turians using nothing but their standard issue combat blades and augmented strength to claim almost three times their number, including several vehicles before being overwhelmed and cut down.  
Raiders are designed for the exclusive use by the women of the Zone Operations Command, better known as ZOCOM.  
It is a lot more slender in appearance given that its primary role is the harassment of supply lines, the raiding of enemy compounds and, if need be, medium grade fire support.**_

_**The raider variant also differs from the Trooper design in that it sports shoulder mounted anti air missile racks for dealing with aircraft and medium range sonic weapons as the primary armament.**_

_**Despite its more agile form, Raider armour is still capable of going toe to toe with the heaviest of ground based infantry and even light ground and air vehicles.**_

_**It has been noted by third party observers that due to the limited manpower available to humanity, GDI has placed a priority on training, equipping and equipping a large percentage of their forces with Zone armour so as to make each individual soldier as deadly as possible, furthering their survival rate and giving the best " bang for buck" for GDI Command when it comes to resource deployment.**_

_**Since Humanity's explosive debut onto the galactic stage, races such as the Turian Hierarchy have accelerated their own development of power armour with the latter deploying bipedal walkers belonging to the "Steelclaw" **_**series.**

* * *

Authors notes:

Well that took too damn long to write, here's hoping to a speedier upload of the next chapter.  
Kudos to anyone who spots the Halo reference.  
Damn formatting.


	3. Calm

_All those books from the '60's and '70's painted the coming century as one of unprecedented advancement and prosperity for the people of the Human race._

_It was only after we finally saw the effects of that god-awful crystal that we realized what lay in store for us._

_The guiding light for all mankind had gone out the moment that meteor entered Earths atmosphere._

_-Dr. Charles Mako : The World We Lost-2026._

The crew compartment was cramped and noisy, the craft they were travelling in quite clearly placing function over form as it propelled itself through the vast endless ocean of space.  
The crew compartments were meant to be spacious by nature, the large internal bay designed to house scores of soldiers and/or heavy tanks but lately, it had been filled to the brim by just equipment and personnel. The bland internal colour scheme of naval grey and neon blue lighting creating a sterile atmosphere aboard the crowded equipment carrier.

Inside stood dozens of figures. Out of the sample he could see, some stood clothed in the usual olive drag tunics that made up the average naval uniform , others sported the tried and true tan hard suits of marine infantry while a handful from his unit still wore their heavy Zone armour,  
the latter standing out like mammoth tanks inside the blue lit chamber.

He shifted his gaze towards the set of windows which overlooked the equipment bay. Behind them he could see several more naval personnel, constantly travelling between holographic screens as data came through from sensors both within, and from outside the craft.  
He thought he could make out a look of annoyance on the face of one of the engineers but it was quickly replaced by one of urgency as they made their way to another room and out of his field of view.

It was the standard activity one could expect from two battalions worth of troops recently pulled from some of the heaviest fighting humanity had encountered since joining the galactic community. Everyone was tired and weary yet the rush of war hadn't quite left their systems just yet.  
People had to find something to do for the next few hours or they risked tearing out a bulkhead due to sheer boredom.

His thought process cut out as he spotted a trio of marines standing guard outside a section marked "Hazardous Materials".  
All carried the usual loadout of werewolf rifles issued to every GDI Infantry soldier as well as a support drone that hovered above the guard detail, presumably to scan any personnel that were attempting to access the area.  
The term "Hazardous" meant a lot more to humans than it did to other species of the galaxy and that usually meant that anything from toxic waste to a nuclear weapon could reside inside the armoured crates residing in the corner of the hold.

Curiosity would normally have propelled him towards the area but right now he was just too damned tired to give it much thought.  
Probably far over his pay grades "need to know" clearance anyway.

His mind quickly returned to his own thoughts. They really were carrying a lot of troops for this trip, and he wasn't meaning just his battalion.

He was talking about the Bison Heavy lift craft and its brothers who were ferrying Jericho and the 79th battalions towards their recently designated R & R post, their bulky shells lumbering through the vast blackness of space towards the systems Mass Relay.

He was glad too. The past few months of fighting had taken its toll on both units as they had slogged through the Batarian defenses towards the capital. His mind drifted back towards his squad supporting the effort to secure the city outskirts and the dogged defense they had encountered there. One memory stood out as he recalled a marine platoon who had attempted to secure a local hardware store. Their point man had maybe gotten two, three feet through the door before he and two other marines behind him had were engulfed in the _whoosh _of heat from a Batarian flamethrower.

Similar stories had occurred throughout the suburbs. One marine fire team had had their point man's upper body torn apart by explosive spikes shot from a Batarians omni tool while in another report, a Zone trooper had put down an escaping troop carrier with sustained fire from his Grinder Heavy Machine gun, only for he and his squad to be blindsided by a Batarian who had strapped an anti-personnel mine to his chest, killing him and one other in a suicide attack.

He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind as the voice amplification systems inside the cargo hold crackled to life.

_"Good evening ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. Our remaining flight time is looking to be around two and a half hours with us hitting the system relay in little under fifteen minutes. The weather forecast for today is black with temperatures looking to hit an all-time high of 2.7 Kelvin. Please remember to brace for sudden acceleration before we hit the relay and to not decorate your seats with this morning's breakfast. Thank you."_

Smug bastard that pilot, what was his name again? Raymond? Reynolds? He'd have to ask once they landed.

Time seemed to pass quickly. The odd piece of debris from the initial battle for system control would flare against the Bison's kinetic barriers, before being repelled away towards deep space or other passing craft. He wasn't used to the almost alien calm of it all; the constant flurry of battle doesn't really give one time to think about life's troubles.  
Well, at least not the ones that weren't threatening to end his own at that moment.

Once more the speakers came to life as the warning to brace for the relay jump came through.  
He took hold of the seat with his hands as the tell-tale tendrils of light associated with a jump washed over the Bison. The reinforced viewing windows inside the hold darkened to almost complete opacity as the convoy lined up along the glowing silvery dagger that was to ferry them to their next destination.

He couldn't so much as feel what happened next. The craft shuddered as the sudden jolt accelerated it to faster than light speeds and within an instant, it had emerged in a new solar system all together. A few seconds later, several more beams of light flashed around the transport as more of its brethren appeared from the corridor of mass free space.

Well at least they hadn't been vented through an airlock yet so that was always a good sign.

* * *

Commander Malcolm Alexander rubbed the wrinkles forming around his eyes as he adjusted to the routine of his observational shift. The usual lukewarm shower had failed to wake him up as much as usual, forcing him to resort to drinking the tar that was standard issue coffee rations to keep him awake.

Taking a sip of the black concoction meant to get him functioning for the remainder of the day, he swept his gaze over a holo screen of expected traffic for the day, their general arrival and departure times letting him know when he could expect the usual flashes of light from the systems relay.

Thus he wasn't surprised when some thirty odd flashes graced the screen showing the feed from one of the stations long range cameras;their forms more closely resembling a species of whale from Earth, rather than a military craft.  
But then again, form mattered little to GDI as much as function; as evidenced by the bulky, circular shape of the space station he now stood in.

He snapped his attention backed to protocol as he looked over the convoys' IFF and access information.  
The IFF checked out as did the access code, even if it was a slightly older code than normal.  
Probably an oversight on the part of logistics. He'd have to issue a tiny reminder to the convoy leader about that.

"_Convoy C-131 on course for planetary drop off point sir."_

_"Good. Patch me through to the pilot leading the convoy"_

Just a _tiny _reminder was all.

The vid screen flickered to life showcasing a man sporting a parted hairline and well defined facial features as well as untidiness of the cockpit he resided in.

_"This is Commander Alexander of Ion Array Argos to Convoy 131 lead, your approach vectors have been transmitted and you are clear for approach, I trust that your journey was uneventful?"_

_"Only the occasional batarian hit my viewing window as we left commander, but apart from that it was about as eventful as ice melting." _  
Alexander chuckled at the morbid joke, the informal exchange a welcome turn of events.

_"Glad to hear it sir, your drop point is ready and waiting to receive you. Just a reminder to update your access codes before you depart."_

_"I knew they had forgotten to give me something before we left, once we land we'll get right on it commander."_

_"Copy that. Proceed to drop point and we'll have crews standing by to help you unload your cargo."_

_"Much appreciated, C-131 actual out."_

The screen fizzled out leaving him staring at the viewing port which showed the outer cosmos. Alexander took one last sip of his now depleted coffee before making his way towards the large desk situated behind the large holographic map which made up his command station.  
The tabletop had little in the way of adornments or decoration except for one item.  
A small scale replica of an 88mm cannon the Germans had used against the Soviets during the second great war of the twentieth century.

To Alexander it symbolised what this station and the dozen or so smaller stations nearby were.  
A large stationary bulwark, meant to hold back the encroaching advance of any enemy that would attack this world.  
The fact that he had six of some of the most powerful anti ship weapons in the galaxy under his command also helped boost the confidence he had in protecting the colony he had come to call home.

Anything short of a full attack fleet would have a hard time getting through both the orbital emplacements and the half dozen frigates and cruisers that made up the garrison fleet.  
That garrison used to be bigger, but the war with the batarians had consumed more of humanities resources than anticipated and with the relatively low risk of attack that this colony had meant that they were among those who had lucked out.

However with the recent gains made in the war ,the batarians were too busy trying to defend their own worlds to worry about an out of the way farming world, so it didn't worry him as much as it had a few months ago.

The Bison were now visible from the command deck, the engines mounted on the "wings" glowed a bright blue as they propelled the comical design towards its destination.

"_EVA, alert ground crews to the convoys arrival and begin another scan of those sections of space near the relay."_

A swift affirmative came from the feminine A.I. as it carried out its newly assigned orders, sending data packets towards the planet's surface and  
re-calibrating the long range scanners towards the aforementioned sections of space.

"**_Ground crews report that they are ready to receive convoy C-131 and are standing by. Deep space scans in progress._**_" _

Good, couldn't let those dust particles think they were getting lax in security, now could they?

* * *

The chair he had been sitting in for the majority of the trip was now becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the minutes ticked by. He needed to stretch his legs or at least do something that would not involve sitting down.

He made his way towards the viewing port, trying to at least catch a glimpse of the colony world that they would be staying on for the next six weeks.  
That was his goal anyway. The sight that greeted him was slightly more...impressive, for lack of a better word. Outside the craft he saw the massive structure that was Ion Array MD-27, its massive Dreadnought grade Ion Cannons jutting out from the circular center like spears lodged in an ancient warriors shield.

He could see the movement of people on what he assumed was the control point in the center of the stations shell, their movement busy but not frantic as they were presumably just getting started for the day.  
Around the base of the Ion Cannons was what could only be described as elevated platforms, on top which were what must have been point defense mass accelerators, ranging in size from small anti-fighter turrets to those the size of a cruisers broadside turret, probably for defending against boarding craft and anything else that it didn't like getting close.

One thing that no other race liked to admit was just how imposing some of the weapons that humanity had at its disposal were.  
Reactions like that of some Batarians when they watched a Stromgald heavy tank engage a Mammoth supporting the 79th during one of their drops.  
It was notable due to the Mammoth crew deciding that crushing the Stromgald was far more efficient than simply shooting it.  
The batarian position had crumbled just as quickly as the Stromgald's frame had once the Mammoth had done its work.  
That was the day when he knew that humanity could carve a place for itself in this galaxy and those who thought otherwise were in for a rude awakening.

He was abruptly dragged out of his flashback by a friendly tap on the shoulder.

He spun his imposing bulk towards the intrusion who turned out to be Essex and Milque, both wearing their casual wear which, like everything else GDI manufactured, utilised armour plates in its design.

Essex was the first to speak, an uncharacteristic frown upon his usually boisterous face.

_"Sarge, Pilot says we're landing in fifteen minutes, but the Captain wants us suited up before then to help offload some crates that apparently the ground crews aren't "qualified to handle" or something like that."_

That meant two things. Either there was some piece of hardware or equipment meant for the colony garrison that civvies weren't supposed to see just yet, or that there really was a nuke in one the crates he saw earlier, either way he didn't like it. But there was no need to let Essex know that just yet.

_"I bet you're just up in arms because everyone else gets to go straight to base and unpack before you do, meaning that you don't get to hog the best quarters like last time."_

_"Well duh, they don't have to punch through walls and deflect bullets everyday with their minds. You got any idea how tired shit like that makes you feel? And then there's the food and best view to think abo-"_

_"Yeah yeah, I know, poor little flash needs his pampering and whatnot."_

He pushed past him and they began to trudge a path back towards the armour locker.

Flash was the nickname he had chosen for Essex due to the crackling purple aura that he emitted whenever he flexed his biotic muscle. Also due to the fact that he was the fasted man in the unit, even with armour on.  
More often than not it was his armour that saved him whenever he decided to crash through walls or living beings like a biotic freight train.

"_What do you think about this Milque?" _He still had to come up with a nickname for the squad's sharpshooter.

_"Don't sit right with me, but I bet the Captain knows what's in those crates and from the look on his face when he told us to find you, I think he's excited."_

Damn. It had to be a nuke after all.

* * *

The colony's main city slowly crept into view as they descended from orbit, the view relatively unobstructed by the skyline of tall buildings usually associated with human colonies.  
What was visible was the large defensive wall that surrounded the cities outermost limits.  
Every GDI colony of a certain size sported what had come to be called simply "The Wall" in popular culture.  
Not actually a wall but more a collection of heavily armed and armoured defense towers with supporting barricades near choke-points, The Wall was meant to serve as the first and last line of defense for a colony world's major cities.  
Meant to fend off invaders that had landed outside of the city proper until a response from the garrison force.  
This was all assuming that an attacking force could actually slip past the chain of orbital stations ready to shoot anything even remotely hostile in the face with their cannons.

Jutting out from the side of the colony was its connection to the rest of the galaxy, the spaceport.  
The large paved runways and multiple hangars sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the relative beauty of the nearby farm fields and meadows.  
Its control tower side emblazoned with the eagle of the Initiative while the rest of the hangars and launch points enjoyed a more subdued colour scheme of gun metal grey.

Around each of the structures scurried tiny figures hauling crates and loading cargo onto other craft that were parked on the port's hardened surface, their activities becoming more frantic as a convoy of military cargo haulers exited from one of the hangars. Heavy lifters meant to transport the new arrivals to the military base that was located nearby.

The flock of heavy lift aircraft soon entered the ports airspace, heading towards their designated landing points before extending their landing skids and angling their wing thrusters downwards for landing.

One after the other, the transports hit the ground with a loud _thud _as the unwavering ground met the large weight that had suddenly decided to squat upon it. Ground crews made their way to the line of aircraft with their offloading equipment in tow, just as the large cargo bay doors of the beasts they were meant to clear out began to open.

From within scores of men and women of all sizes and uniforms poured out. Some wore casual fatigues while some still wore their hard suits for whatever reason. One small group of individuals wearing zone armour emerged from the lead Bison with large armoured crates occupying both of their exo skeletal hands.

From behind the main group of ground crew approached a coyote APC. Its turret mounted cannon meant for killing light vehicles, now powered down as it brought its frame about and angled its rear doors towards the approaching Zone troopers. The doors opened with a quiet hiss as the bare interior became visible.

The Zoners maneuvered their way through the stream of personnel making their way towards another convoy of heavy lifters meant to transport them to their new posts. Vega, Essex and Milque had to take care not to overexert themselves in any one direction, lest they knock someone out with their augmented strength. From behind them, another figure approached. The figure was soon identified as a gruff voice came over his suits loud speakers.

_"Alright, load it up. We haven't got all day to wait around"_ Vega wanted to point out to his Captain that they actually _did _have all day to wait around considering that it was still morning. But enough incidents in basic had taught him to watch what came out of his mouth.

_"Well ladies I guess some introductions are in order. This lovely little piece of heaven that is housing us for the next six weeks is the colony world of Marathon and that-"_

His arm extended outwards towards the city behind him as his suits audio projector boomed.

_"-is the city of Keos. And it will be accommodating us for the next few weeks, so I expect you all to act like the professional soldiers that you are supposed to be and keep the city intact until we leave." _

Vega hoped that the city officials had had the foresight to have a rainy day fund for things like soldiers who hadn't had leave for a few months.  
A rather large rainy day fund.

That was the moment Essex decided to open his mouth.

_"Yeah Yeah, keep it all pretty stuff, will do. Let's just hope there are some decent bars around here." _Essex's mouth running off in another instance of leaping before looking.

_"The Prison bars can handle you just fine private so shut your mouth and get another crate before you hurt yourself."_

The rest of the squad loaded the equipment they were carrying on to the waiting while the dejected biotic made his way back towards the Bison to fetch what was left in the cargo hold.

He could see the thousands of individuals that comprised the two battalions streaming off the transports, each lugging a piece of cargo in some shape or form while the rest of the equipment was hauled onto the heavy movers that the local garrison had provided.  
He saw everything from Coyotes to Predators to the Wolverines that supported the Zone troops during their drops.

Curiously, the number of vehicles was far lower than what he expected to make up a mechanised battalion, far fewer in fact than the number he had seen before leaving the battlefields of Kyran.  
Well, it wasn't his battalion that was under strength if that was the case, so he pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

He turned to head back to the Bison to fetch his personal belongings before spotting Milque carrying his own gear, and a little bit extra.

_"Forget something?" _His cheerfully sarcastic tone evident as he unshouldered the extra bag he was carrying and handed it to Vega.

_"Remember, Genesis beer, served cold."_

* * *

_"We're picking up some strange readings from sector two four, unusually high dark energy output that's coming from-" The_ man paused as he looked over his screen _"apparently nothing sir."_

The man now had Alexander's attention, this was out of the ordinary and frankly, a welcome break from the usual routine.

_"Bring the data up on the main screen as well as a camera sweep of that section of space."_

The large holographic projector in the center of the command room brought up a transparent 3D model of the sector in question, with points of interest being pinned with the incoming data.

Interesting.

_"Send this through to Hornet and see if they get the same data." _Hornet being one of the nearby defense stations also assigned to defend Marathon.

_"Their EVA is running a sweep sir, should be about twenty seconds before they confirm whether it's accurate or not."_

Not many things in the galaxy could cause a dark energy spike like that, at least not many naturally occurring phenomena. So it was either artificially generated, or they were witnessing a never before seen event.

A quick beep of comm traffic held his answer.

_"Hornet confirms sir, doesn't appear to be anything out there but it's definitely not naturally occurring."_

_"Get me a line to Captain Soban on the Houston."_

The 3D map of space was replaced by the image of a man in grey uniform, his short cropped black hair hiding a set of scars running down towards his left eye.

_"Your EVA unit informs me that you have an anomaly on your sensors commander, something about dark energy." _  
His clear and well-spoken voice out of place compared to the figure they were originating from.

"_Yes sir, we can't do much here other than sit on our hands and analyse what we're seeing."_

_"So you would like me to perform a little reconnaissance of that area and make sure everything is kosher, right, I understand. I'll get you some first-hand Intel soon."_

_"Much appreciated Sir, should be nothing but in the odd case that it isn't..."_

His voice trailed off.

_"We want to know about it. Understood Commander, Soban Out."_

The hologram fizzled out of existence to be replaced with the 3D map model once more, the positions of the garrison fleet now marked in green as two blips broke off from the cluster and began to make their way towards the disturbance.

A quick set of commands entered into his Omni Tool changed the screen once again, bringing up the feed from the cameras positioned on the forward part of the station to reveal two Endeavor class frigates accelerating towards the transmitted co-ordinates.

From within the huddled cluster of cruisers and frigates that lay in orbit around Marathon, two shapes broke off from the swarm. The blocky shapes following the design style that the initiative had gone with for all their naval vessels.

The bright blue glow of the frigate's engines carrying them through the blackness and past Argo station, the names on their hull clearly visible beside the golden bird of prey that had a home on every GDI ship.

The _Dead End_ and _No Remorse_ respectively.  
The names coming from two famous missions that the Allied nations had undertaken against the Soviet Union during the Second Great War.

As they got closer and closer to the source of the disturbance, they spread out. The _No Remorse _arced its trajectory so that its main Mass accelerator was aimed directly at the area emitting the dark energy readings, in case something unexpected occurred and cover fire was required.

The _Dead End _paused as its cargo bay doors opened for the deployment of its compliment of four Lance fighter craft as well as the additional drones and scanning equipment they carried, the streamlined design concealing the arsenal of long range missiles and other munitions housed within their frames.

Hopefully the former wouldn't be needed.

* * *

Like a herd of interstellar cattle, Jericho and the 79th Battalions were moving around the small city that was bracing itself for their arrival.  
The colony was not like a typical human settlement.  
Whereas with other worlds where millions of people from the Sol system settled so as to avoid the ecological catastrophe that was the birthplace of humanity, Marathon housed only a few hundred thousand people overall and they were mostly scattered around the planet.

The presence of the nearby Batarian hegemony had deterred many from making Marathon their home and that was predicted to continue till the batarians were defeated in the war that was now raging in the nearby sectors.  
The only major location where several thousand people had clumped together was the capital of Keos, the spaceport receiving supply craft monthly so that the produce of the land could be used to feed other worlds with far bigger populations.

Consequently, the garrison for this world had shrunk since the ever present threat of the batarians had been pushed back in the early offensives undertaken by the GDI. It was, however, bolstered constantly by the presence of troops who had been designated to visit the planet for recuperation, leading to a respectably strong ground force.

The Battalions were acting like a morale booster for the locals who didn't usually get to see this many soldiers on a regular basis. Predators, Wolverines, Coyotes, anything and everything that had fought in the few months beforehand was now on display as the convoy made its way along the outskirts of Keos towards the military base of Pylos some fifteen kilometers away.

* * *

_"Link established Captain. Dead End is standing by, call sign Husker One."  
_  
_"Husker One, this is Husker Actual, establish a drone curtain around the anomaly, fifty kilometer distance. Husker Two, provide overwatch, five hundred kilometer distance, confirm."_

Both of the frigates responded with their confirmations and altered course to suit.  
The Lance fighters that buzzed around _Dead End_'s form moved towards their newly marked objectives_, _the sensor probes that they carried ready for activation.

The frigate itself initiated a cautious advance as her engines now glowed a dim blue compared to the brightness they had displayed earlier, her broadsides constantly adjusting and readjusting to compensate for the ever changing position of the craft.

_"__Husker One to Husker Actual, Major Miles reports sensor net established. His Wing is establishing a perimeter now, still waiting for visual confirmation on the anomaly.__" _

_"Roger that Husker One, proceed with caution on your approach, we still don't know what this is yet."_

_"Copy that, Husker one out."_

The frigate was now less than five hundred kilometers from the source of the disturbance with its fighter wing encircling the most concentrated point of Dark Energy emissions. The on-board sensors and weapon systems of _No Remorse_ exchanged the standard handshake protocol between their respective EVA systems before transmitting the incoming data to both the garrison fleet and _Argo _station.

Soban didn't like this. It had "ambush" written over all of it. The system relay however, was too far off for a ship to suddenly jump in and engage the recon party so the possibility of attack didn't make much sense.

_"Sensor data from the probes coming through now sir."_

_"Update the main screen."_

_"Aye aye."_

The new information from the half dozen probes that had been set up now showing up in orange next to the data incoming from _Argo _station. So far they were showing the same readings as the Ion Array, meaning that while it showed that their sensors were in working order, they were still no closer to finding out what it was that was causing the disturbance.

_"**Caution. Dark Energy spike detected. Recommend falling back to minimum safe distance."**_

The irritatingly calm voice of the EVA unit aboard his ship suddenly shook everyone into action as warning lights flashed and alarms went off. Soban ignored the sudden explosion of activity and reacted immediately.

_"Husker Actual to Husker One! Get out of there now and retreat to fall-back position!"_

**_"Second Dark Energy spike detected. Prepare for possible detonation."_**

_"Detonation? Detonation of what!?" _The situation had gone from mildly dangerous to potentially catastrophic as_ S_oban was now facing the possibility of losing both of the frigates he had sent to investigate, as well as all of the men and women serving on them. All without any warning.

_"Goddammit I want them out of there yesterday! Husker one do you read?"_

_"We're getting a lot of interference from the energy spike Captain, it's likely that it's blocking comm traffic."_

_"Well cut through and get them out-"_

His sentence was cut short as a large flash appeared on the main screen before the external cameras could polarize to compensate. When they did, what they showed was a rapidly expanding wave of what looked like interconnected purple lightning.  
It covered the distance between its starting point and _Dead End _in less than three seconds. The arcs of lightning washed over the entirety of the frigates hull along with the hulls of the Lance wing that had been stationed nearby.

It rapidly kept expanding for another two seconds before the bubble of energy began to dissipate and flicker out before the wave of lighting faded and the light it once provided was no more.

Everyone in the command room stopped.

"_Status report, now!"_

One of the ensigns monitoring a holo screen snapped out of the moment and punched up the images he was seeing onto the main screen while others were still trying to sort through the data coming in after the explosion.

_"Dead end and No Remorse appear disabled but undamaged. Same goes for the fighters that were deployed, we're getting bursts of comm chatter but it's garbled and generally unintelligible. The Dark energy wave is dissipating and Argo is reporting that the anomaly is no longer being picked up by sensors."_

At least there was the possibility that no one died. Soban was still processing it all before the ensign spoke again.  
_  
"Orders, Sir?"_

All eyes were now on him, people looking for someone to tell them what they should do now.

_"Deploy rescue craft and technicians to recover both frigates, I want the Beijing and Anchorage to move up and support them. Bring the rest of the fleet into defensive positions facing towards the relay and request overwatch from the Argos and Hornet."_

_"Aye aye."_

* * *

The Convoy was now some six kilometers out of Keos when Sergeant Vega decided to take a look back. He didn't need magnification to tell him that despite being so far out of town, there were still vehicles in the convoy exiting the city. Hundreds of vehicles moving thousands of men and tons of vehicles and equipment to the main military base on the planet.  
A line of grey and tan literally half a dozen kilometers long, a feat of logistical preparation if he had ever seen one. He wondered if there would even be enough space for all of them when they got to Pylos, the military base charged with protecting the capital.

He turned away from the military spectacle to his squad mates. Essex was busy running alongside the convoy with the help of his biotics because he was, well, bored. Milque was busy running diagnostics on his suit after an error had cropped up in his suits arm servos.  
He hadn't seen Nicky since disembarking from the transports a few hours beforehand and Captain Toni was busy going through the standard transitional procedure that all squad leaders had to go through with the new chain of command present on the planet.

The rest of the squad were elsewhere but he did spot someone of interest. A man bearing the rank of Colonel and a face that looked like the man had been existing on a diet of coffee and stimpacks. His closely cropped hairline was still quite neat compared to the mess that was the rest of his outfit. James could overhear him discussing something regarding vehicle housing with another man in a distinctly thick British accent.

He was poised to learn more before a bright light appeared in the sky. Not many noticed it at first but gradually more and more had their heads drawn skywards. The average infantrymen had nothing else to do but stare, but the Colonel James had been watching already had his omni tool lit up as he keyed in commands for what could only be an update on the situation. James subconsciously gripped his Werewolf just a bit tighter than he had been a few moments before.

* * *

A proverbial grenade had just gone off in the chain of command; people scrambled between various stations and holo displays. The garrison of cruisers quickly spread out to cover their wounded comrades from anything that might show up near the systems mass relay. Specially retrofitted Bison rescue ships docked with the two disabled frigates and disgorged their crew of medical and engineering personnel while other rescue craft made their way towards the Lance Fighter craft now drifting helplessly in space.

In the background were the cruisers _Beijing _and _Anchorage. _Both had moved ahead of the rescue operation so as to prevent a potential attack from hampering the rescue effort. Their large bulk bristling with weapons that now scanned the nearby section of space.  
All of the movement was being watched over by the orbital defense stations as their crews co-ordinated the efforts of all ships involved in the rescue effort.

The rescue crews had managed to board _Dead End _and _No Remorse_ to find their crews unharmed. The majority of scanning, weapon, propulsion and communication systems had been overloaded by whatever the Dark Energy wave had thrown at them leaving them unable to contact help.  
The Fighter wing had encountered a similar problem before making contact with those who had come to their aid.

* * *

The entire situation was one big mess of problems that were never expected to happen. Several ship captains and ground side elements had requested updates on the happenings of the recovery operation while others were others were questioning whether the local population should take shelter in the various bunkers and safe points set up around the planet.

Being the biggest weapon in the solar system, the _Argo _had become the de facto place to request an update from. The crew were fielding the majority of comm traffic that was flowing through the local net and right now it was giving Commander Alexander a headache.

"_EVA, status report."_

**_"Rescue operations are proceeding without incident. Both the Dead End and No Remorse are now being towed towards the Hornet for repairs. Scheduled relay traffic has been suspended till the system has been deemed safe and any potential danger dealt with."_**

"_Excellent, begin analysis of the sensor data that we got from the probes just before that explosion and make sure that both of those frigates are checked for any kind of fault, be it physical or_ electrical."

A simple acknowledgment was the the reply that he received before another query was directed at him.

"_Sir, there's a request to speak with you directly about what just happened from one of the new battalions command element."_

"_Specify ensign."  
_  
_"Leader of Jericho Battalion sir, a Colonel Coats."_

_"Very well, put him through."_

* * *

**_/-/¬begin¬viral¬piggyback¬installation¬MD-27¬uplink¬322/X43¬/-/_**

**/-/¬piggyback¬successful¬infiltrating¬subroutines¬/-/**

**/-/¬alert¬local¬EVA¬attempting¬countermeasures¬alarm¬firewalls¬disabled¬/-/**

**/-/¬alarm¬signal¬terminated¬/-/**

**/-/¬tracing¬primary¬unit¬program¬/-/**

**/-/¬...¬/-/**

**/-/¬program¬located¬ initiating ¬takeover¬/-/**

**/-/¬...¬/-/**

**/-/¬EVA¬unit¬takeover¬and¬emulation¬complete¬supplementing¬sensor¬data¬/-/**

**/-/¬sensors¬reconfigured¬assuming¬control¬of¬weapon¬systems¬/-/**

**/-/¬complete¬/-/**

**/-/attempting¬to¬infect¬ neighboring ¬installations¬/-/**

**/-/¬aborting¬probability¬of¬discovery¬98%¬/-/**

**/-/¬primary¬objectives¬achieved¬initiating¬sleeper¬state¬/-/**

* * *

**_CODEX ENTRY- PLANETARY DEFENSES_**

**With the advent of the space age for the various races of the galaxy, there came a time of a second resource rush in the form of planetary colonisation. Races that had found themselves facing the problem of overcrowding and dwindling natural resources on their home planets now found that not only could they overcome both problems, but also usher in a Golden Age for their species.**  
**With the formation of the galactic community, it became increasingly apparent that although there were resources in abundance for all, there would always be people who craved more. This philosophy was proven correct with the advent of the Krogan Rebellions when the Galactic Council refused to allow the Krogan to continue their centuries old expansion into council space.  
After the decades of war that followed and the millions of deaths that were caused by Krogan meteorite weapons, colony defenses were  
re-evaluated in terms of importance.**

**A Typical inner Council world does not require heavy defenses to be secure. Being several relays from areas of conflict and danger such as the Terminus systems, they do not require orbital defenses or garrison fleets. Typically, only the odd patrol vessel is required to maintain law and order in system with heavier military defenses being relegated to nearby fleets stationed at primary Mass Relays.**

**Outer Council worlds are equipped with heavier defenses which typically include, but are not limited to, Patrol fleets, orbital emplacements, Sensor drone nets and planetary garrisons. These defenses are often bolstered if a system is close to a rival powers territory E.G the Batarian Hegemony and the Global Defense Initiative.  
The Turian Hierarchy is noted for being the one council race who takes planetary defense to heart. All of their colony worlds have space based and planetary garrisons ready to resist anything from a lowly pirate raid to a full blown siege.**

**The Global Defense Initiative is noted for being masters at both offense and defense. Years of holding Earths Blue Zones from both Tiberium and NOD militants has, although being significantly different, translated into effective strategies for both static and mobile defenses on the multiple planets under Initiative control. Layers of Space, Orbital, Surface to Space and Ground Based defenses characterise the protection found on all GDI worlds, from the fringe of Initiative territory all the way to Earth itself. Much like the Turian worlds, GDI Colonies can resist a protracted siege or up to several weeks before a relief fleet is sent to aid the defenders.  
This system is not perfect, however, with the notable example being the Colony world of Elysium, where the GDI defenders were overwhelmed by a massive Pirate assault. Funding for further defensive measures has been hampered by the war against the Batarian Hegemony taking priority over increased defenses.**

**Information on the defenses of Hegemony worlds is sparse given the secretive nature of their government but recent offensives undertaken by the GDI suggest that only core worlds are given substantial protection while outer colonies are protected by roving bands of mercenaries and pirates under the Hegemony's employ.**

**Information on the Terminus systems is not available due to the non-governmental rule that is common on most worlds.**

* * *

Author's notes: Not much action this time and I was late in updating so I do apologise but stay tuned for some fun in the later chapters.  
Kudos to anyone who can guess what's coming for our friends on Marathon.  
Also a reminder (again) to check out the stories by CharNobyl and Peptuck if you haven't already.


	4. Downtime

_When you start attacking, they start defending. When you stop attacking, they stop defending. When they stop defending, they start attacking, so don't stop attacking._

_-Unofficial saying in the GDI regarding tactical and strategic warfare.-_

* * *

_2178 – Omega space station_

"We're clear, sentries down."

There was always some characteristic about a space station that didn't quite make sense or wasn't in sync with the rest of the construction. Sometimes it was the fact that the orbital axis picked for the station wasn't quite as optimal as it could have been or maybe it was that the various different sections and compartments were contracted out to the lowest bidder, to be assembled together later and stuck with a seal of approval that held about as much authority as a Krogan did on the Citadel Council.

For Omega it was something else. The station had been built by various mining corporations after the Protheans had, eons ago, detected the huge deposits of element zero in the asteroid that the station had been built around. With the coming of the new generation of space faring species, the once prosperous mining facility had been converted into a lawless den of pirates, merc gangs and occasionally, the hapless civilian who'd lost a bet and been stuck without a credit to their name.

This particular station housed nearly eight million souls who'd lived a life of less than reputable means, all seeking a fresh start or simply a safe haven from the ever pursuing arms of law enforcement.  
It was the proverbial "Wild West" of the galaxy and lately, the various warlords who called it home had been having a very profitable venture raiding planets on the fringes of Council space.

Today was different, however. Where the traditional holo-lists of credits and salvage recovered from each colony raid were displayed in the respective headquarters of the mercs that carried out the carnage usually resided, there was now only damage reports, casualty lists and the white noise of news broadcasts. All of them reported the same thing that everybody already knew; they just hadn't been expecting it.

Torfan.

The small moon base leased to the various "contractors" under the employ of the Batarian Hegemony had been, just a few short days ago, wiped from existence by a fleet of powerful human ships.  
Anti piracy operations were nothing new, after a period of time when raids were especially devastating, the governments of whomever were attacked would send Naval and monetary support to the affected systems. The newly arrived ship would then set up patrols that would guard against any further aggression whilst the allocated money would go towards planetary recovery.

A suitable response indeed, if it worked. All too often the pirates would simply switch sectors and wait it out until the response ships were reallocated to the newly ablaze systems and then go right back to their old hunting grounds, often coercing the colonial governments to part with some credits in exchange for no more attacks, before attacking again anyway.

Direct action against pirate bases _was _rare however. The Turians were the usual initiators of such actions and as such piracy against them was usually confined to their client race, the Volus.  
Humanity hadn't warranted a "guideline of piracy" as of yet, they'd only made their explosive debut onto the galactic stage some twenty years earlier and that was against another galactic power, not low level privateers and the odd merc looking for fun.

That had all changed now.

The safeguard of being an "official" Batarian facility was thought to have been an effective deterrent against reprisal after the raid of Elysium that went so badly wrong. That assumption had proved to be in error and now the investors in the raid were scrambling to calculate the losses they had sustained in the venture whilst recalculating their own security.  
That was why he and his team were here, to compound those newly arisen concerns and make sure that the jackals of the galaxy thought twice before looking favourably at another human world.

"Corridor is clear, moving to secure airlock." From out of the darkness leapt seven men. Each moved with the methodical precision that their years of training had demanded and took up positions around the grey and black door that would grant them access to their targets.  
Any passive sensors scanning for intruders had their search waves mimicked and bounced back towards them by the mobile EVA units in each of the men's suits, leaving them virtually undetectable save for visual detection.

"Unlocking in ten." The Special Operatives had traversed the length of the station to reach this point, the usual meeting point where information brokers traded their precious commodity to those looking for new killing fields. Today, the angry investors of the Elysium raid were present; conversing with several Turians and Salarians and hoping for a vulnerable colony world they could plunder and help negate their losses.  
They were unaware of the vengeful humans who were even now taking up positions above and around them.  
In one of the ventilation shafts housing a huge fan responsible for cycling oxygen to the meeting chamber rested one such human. He'd placed himself in such a way to avoid the rotating blades of the duct fan and allow him to get a perfect angle on his targets.  
The GLS-91 sniper rifle was somewhat awkward to handle from his sitting position but he'd been able to successfully gain enough room to rest it on his knee whilst avoiding having to stick it out the gaps in the fan duct.  
_  
_Other members of his team were finishing up covering the escape routes to the long rectangular chamber.  
It was a text book ambush location with only two entrances, one up a flight of stairs and one off to the side that led into a maintenance area.  
His comrades had divided into three pairs. Two of them had prepped themselves at either entrance whilst the third pair that he was part of had taken the high ground in an effort to take the proverbial high ground of the site. They weren't quite the Commandoes that Initiative propaganda liked to portray in the media, more a halfway point between the average Marine and the real deal yet more than capable of handling a job such as this. Infiltrating and eliminating pirate strongholds was their _Modus Operandi, _the task of actually taking on professional armies was left to the _other_ guys.

"Seal broken, ready to move on your signal."

The leader of the operation was one Lieutenant Tony Soanso. A heavy set man, not usually one to care about politics as long it didn't directly affect his men. A man who also harboured a particularly fierce hatred of Aliens, ally or not, thanks to his father's death at Shanxi. His Werewolf hissed and clicked as it cycled into its designated marksman mode while he keyed his comm line, awaiting the usual responses from his men as they finished the necessary planning for the OP.  
All responded with the expected confirmations, allowing him to say the words that would bring hell upon their targets.

"All points secure. Drop the Screamer and move in on my mark. No prisoners."

One of the operatives by the stairway keyed a few commands into his omnitool and shot a small ball of putty onto the ceiling above the eighteen or so aliens conversing about their wretched trade.  
The ball splattered onto the ceiling silently and the internal electronic warfare package that it had coated scanned the room.  
Half a second later and it had marked the hostile troops below it, relaying the information to the teams combat suits and insulating their systems against what happened next.A pulse of electronic white noise beamed directly towards the armour of the various Batarians, Turians and Salarians in the room, overwhelming their suit filters and causing their helmets to randomly polarise.  
Effectively blinded, the recipients of the cyber attack clutched their heads as the Screamer package let loose a banshee wail into their now unprotected ears, courtesy of overridden audio filters.

"Mark"

The snipers had already sighted their targets of opportunity and allowed the tendons controlling their fingers to depress the triggers on their weapons.  
Unprotected, plain clothes targets could be blown into an unidentifiable mess of strewn apart body parts if they suffered the wrath of a GLS-91. Shielded targets fared little better.  
The slugs of material the miniature Railguns fired were the size of a pebble and cracked the kinetic barriers of the pirates with contemptuous ease, covering the few centimetres of atmosphere between the invisible barrier and their armoured projectors before the sound of the rail gun even echoed through the room.  
Ceramic plating and super dense polymer was penetrated as if it wasn't even present, tearing apart a Turian from the waist down while the other slug that had been fired turned a Salarian into a bubbly explosion of green flesh and liquid.

Two explosions accompanied the chaos, signalling the arrival of the rest of the operatives as their Werewolves barked at the incapacitated pirates. Blue, green and red blood spewed forth in several miniature fountains as mass accelerator rounds perforated the aliens who hadn't had the ability to comprehend what was happening, let alone take cover and return fire.  
More sniper shots rang out as the Pirates began to fire at anything they could see or catch a glimpse of.  
Two more were dropped by the snipers while five more fell to the enfilading fire of the groundside commando's in a fantastic mess of blood and broken armoured plating.

Ten seconds into the fight, the Screamer ran out of power, using the last few seconds of its electronic life to target two Turians who had ducked behind a shipping crate. An explosion rang out as two jets of shrapnel hit the kinetic barriers of the aliens, dropping their protective shields to a quarter of their full strength and allowing the two pairs of operative's that made up the ground team to ventilate them with textbook efficiency.

Around seven Pirates remained of the original eighteen and they'd sluggishly taken cover after the screamer had ceased functioning. Two Batarians brought up their Avenger assault rifles and sighted the pair of humans who'd come through from the staircase, firing with both their main weapons and the under barrel shotgun attachments. The slivers of fast moving tungsten clipped the kinetic barriers that protected the shadowy figures shoulder pads but failed to pass through the powerful protective shields.  
Unknown to the Batarians, their actions had marked them as a priority and their target's comrades that had flanked the pirate duo sighted his grenade launcher and fired.

The small explosive canister raced through the air to impact the side of one of the Batarians, directing its stored explosive force into his vulnerable abdomen and out to hit the other pirate.  
Flesh and artificial material merged in an explosion that erased the first Batarian and sliced through the second, all thanks to GDI weapon smiths.  
The Snipers perched in the fan ducts spotted two more clusters of pirates, three and two respectively and marked the first for the ground team, eliminating the second on their own.

All respective fire was now concentrated on the three remaining aliens, cutting apart the containers, desks and chairs they were using for cover as, after all, none were designed to resist weapons fire.  
The remaining pirates attempted to surrender, throwing their arms into the air and begging profusely for the violence to stop.  
A rail gun round and multiple bursts from special issue Werewolves dispelled any illusion that the orchestrators of Elysium had of getting out alive.  
Their minds having left the mortal world, the pirate's bodies fell to the floor with a _thump_ that left the room eerily quiet.

The entire ordeal had lasted less than twenty seconds.

"Six One, removal protocol. Six Three, get down here and sweep for witnesses, Six Two get what we came here for."  
Soanso's men moved to carry out their assigned duties, the snipers ducking out of their nests and eliminating any passerby that might have seen the spectacle of a GDI Special Forces team in action while the two men who'd come through the main door with Soanso moved to assemble the dead pirates into a heap, soon to coat the bodies in hydrazine and incinerate any evidence of their ever being on Omega.

"Found the chip, downloading contents now."

"Good, frag it when you're done. Six Three, any problems?" He knew that there wasn't, not unless someone had been capable enough to eliminate two of his best men.

"Negative, all clear. Want us to set up a CP by the main entrance?" A checkpoint would be the standard procedure and he'd rather not risk some Volus Pirate wannabe stumbling in on his operation.

"Do it, holler if you see anything."

"Roger that."

He moved towards the man who was performing a file transfer on the data chip they'd come here for, replicating its contents for InOps to have a look at later. Anything that was on there could hopefully point them towards more disreputable individuals who thought Pirate life was fun.

"Any snags?" he quizzed the man, colloquially referred to as "Techs" for their ability to work with almost any computer based system.

"No sign of booby traps or a failsafe, just a sloppy firewall job. Should be done in a couple of seconds."

"Good get-"

"Wait, aw shit!" Soanso's sentence was interrupted as the Tech's Omnitool flashed red, a large exclamation point showing up on its central display.

"What?" He exclaimed.

"It's got a pinger, it's sending out a message to an address nearby, I'm trying to block it."  
A pinger meant that whoever had handled the chip wanted to keep it safe, to the point of having an alarm installed that would alert some nearby security if it were ever breached without permission.

"Six Three, we could be having company soon, stay sharp and execute any inbounds with extreme prejudice." The planned time estimate for the cleanup went out the window as the bare bone essentials required to mask their presence were carried out. They had to be, else the GDI risked hostilities from the Terminus Systems.

"Copy that."

"Have you got the data?" he turned his head to face the Tech again.

"File transfer is now. . . done, wiping original contents." A green progress bar slid across the Omnitool for a few seconds as the fast acting removal protocols terminated the files still inside the chip.

"Alright, get those corpses burning and saddle up; we're moving off of this rock."

The last of the corpses was tossed onto the pile of dead bodies and coated in hydrazine, guaranteed to burn to a few thousand degrees and ruin any ballistic analysis conducted. Not that Omega had any police or military force to conduct such an analysis but it was still better to be safe, rather than sorry.  
A small jet of flame originating from one of the human's Omnitool set ablaze the messy heap and allowed the rest of the team to respond to the potential threat of party crashers.

"Six One, deploy a Cricket and a wall across from the main entrance, Six Two, Smart Mines on the stairway, move!"

The pair designated Six One knelt down and emptied the contents of their back packs. One of them contained a Cricket Defense Turret, small and lacking in any serious firepower but handy enough to be carried around by a single person without over encumbering said individual.  
Its lone rapid fire mass accelerator provided about as much firepower as a Zone issue Werewolf and its onboard computers were configured to deal with fast moving infantry. Only the power source was an issue, lasting little over sixty minutes before requiring a recharge.

_Still, handy enough to swing a battle and not yet available to the average consumer.  
_  
The second man pulled out a small and slender square which promptly reconfigured into a narrow rectangle. He moved to place it in front of a the entry way that led from the narrow corridor into the former meeting room, watching as the rectangle's bottom opened up into three segments, each forming up on top of each other to create a solid segment a few inches thick. The sides of the container moved downwards and lined up with the floor, bolting into it to form a solid wall of cover for the humans.  
The process was repeated as five more rectangular containers formed into walls of cover in strategic positions around the room, one for each of the defensible areas of the room.

"This is Six Three, we have Krogan incoming. Falling back and laying Spookers."

Spookers, meaning noise makers, flash emitters and low level sonic pulses meant to knock a man off his feet rather than outright kill him. Helpful for riot control and they automatically self destructed when they were no longer useful.

"Copy that, we've got the welcoming party sorted, just get here before they do." He moved away from the entrance as his HUD added the newly awakened Cricket to its display of friendlies and behind one of the newly constructed walls, shouldering his Werewolf and switching to its Ion Cannon attachment. If Krogan were coming, then they'd need to deal with them the same way the rest of the Galaxy had learned thousands of years beforehand.

Hit them as hard as you can, as fast as you can, from as far away as Three emerged from the long corridor and rushed to cover the now sole approach into the room, ducking behind the new walls and levelling their Railguns at the now open door.  
Small distant explosions could be heard, marking the advance of the Krogan response force and the hopeful confusion they had from the surprise packages that pock marked their route of advance.

"Spookers one through four all reported only one contact before termination, repeat, one hostile inbound."

"Copy. One and Two, fall back to the farm. Three, get up top and provide overwatch from the stairs."  
Soanso finished his round of giving orders, raising his Omnitool to reconfigure the weapons lock on the Cricket from safe to free fire mode, angling its automated turret to face the door.  
The two pairs of operative's relocated from their positions and retreated back up the stairway towards the previously planned escape point with the data that they'd all come to retrieve.  
Soanso listened in once more for the sounds of his challenger.

The explosions marking the Spookers ceased after a few more seconds, more quickly than they should have, leaving only the sound of steady breathing to reach Soanso's ears as his eyes sighted the newcomer.

Through his helmet's magnification he saw the intricate details that made up the armour of the single Krogan.  
Crimson red dashed with stripes of jet black and cold metal grey with a flatter dome helmet compared to the usually more angled helmets commonly available on the black market.  
The alien was huge, at the very least twice the height of Soanso and covered in glowing hexagonal tech armour. Curiously, it was wielding two weapons, one a claymore shotgun and something else that the Commando hadn't seen before.

The Cricket wasted no time in summing up the attacker, it simply let loose with its mass accelerator into the hulking humanoid tank.

Soanso and Six Three followed suit, firing a barrage of high velocity slugs and Ion radiation into the Krogan who was now erasing the distance between the first block of cover Soanso had claimed near the door.  
Six Three took a collective breath and sighted the single Krogan, firing shortly after the other and watching the first slug connect with the overly powerful kinetic barrier, slowing to a stop and failing to penetrate, only for the second to crack the shielding and dig into the combination of super dense ceramic layers and armoured hide.  
The railgun was usually capable of reducing humanoid targets to non entities, but for the Krogan, it might as well have been a bee sting, causing annoyance but still barely registering thanks to the various secondary and tertiary organs and redundancy systems that made the species so damn dangerous.

The Krogan charged the mangled remains of the entry way door, pulling back with the hand carrying the unidentified weapon and slamming it into a sizable piece of the wreck. Something triggered in the weapon itself, a sort of biotic discharge, propelling the affected debris straight towards the Cricket.  
The massive kinetic energy behind the impromptu projectile caused it to connect with, and then deform, the single barrel of the defensive turret, in spite of its kinetic barrier, before the rest of the Cricket caved in and joined with the door into one heap of destroyed metal.

In one fell swoop, the Krogan had eliminated a third of the primary fire support covering Soanso and wasted no time in bringing his other weapon to bear on the defenders.  
More super accelerated Railgun rounds collided with his holographic Tech armour yet failed to penetrate, obviously showing the massive power supply feeding into the barriers projector points and recharging it.  
Soanso discharged the Ion attachment on his Werewolf before diving out of the spot of cover he'd been hiding behind as the bark of the Krogan's Claymore shotgun tore apart the super dense carbon composite that made up the square of cover.

Sliding a few feet, Soanso brought up his Werewolf to face the Krogan and fired off a short burst after reconfiguring it back into rifle mode. His efforts were rewarded with the sound of breaking glass as his quarry's Tech Armour finally broke under the strain of being assaulted with high powered weapons.  
Whilst he may have regarded it as a small victory, the Krogan didn't let him savour it, smashing through the remains of his former cover and continuing on to close with the lone Commando whilst shouting terrible curses.

Six Three's GLS-91 rifles barked again and the two slugs they launched cleaved into the lower back section of the huge creature's armour and into the hard layers beneath. A momentary stumble from the alien was all that rewarded their efforts as it swung what Soanso had now deemed a hammer at his position.  
He activated the concussive module on his Omnitool and let the small canister impact the Krogan dead in the face, confusing its senses long enough for him to roll backwards away from the deadly melee weapon his opponent possessed. Sparks of biotic energy erupted from the hammer as it hit the floor he'd been crouching over a second earlier, cracking the tiles around it and causing enough energy to ripple outwards and disrupt Soanso mid roll.  
He landed flat on his stomach but managed to maintain his grip on his Werewolf, letting off a small burst before getting to his feet and sprinting away from the beast whilst hurdling various pieces of debris in his way.

The Krogan saw his retreating opponent and brought up his Claymore to aim for Soanso's back. Railgun rounds impacted his shoulder and sternum, throwing off his aim and causing his weapon to miss its intended mark and go into cool down mode.  
The Snipers had sufficiently pissed him off enough to warrant his mostly undivided attention, though they didn't know it yet. He ignored the slight sting of muscle and bone re knitting back into place and brought his hammer arm up and backwards, hurling it towards the snipers perch on the stairway once he was satisfied he'd built up enough power to toss the huge instrument of blunt force trauma at his foes.

In between the heat cycling and adjustment of their sights, there wasn't enough time for Six Three to spot the hammer now flying towards them before it collided with the metal wall they were bracing their rifles on. The head of the hammer was the part which impacted first, discharging the stored biotic energy inside and causing the material to explode into one of the humans that made up Six Three.  
Kinetic barriers stopped most of the now mangled debris from slicing through his combat armour and into the soft tissue behind it, but some fragments managed to dig deep into the affected victim's upper right arm as the body it was attached to hit the nearby wall.

"Six Three A is down!"

The notification rang in Soanso's ear as he reconfigured his Werewolf to fire a single, anti-material Railgun round into the distracted Krogan's weapon arm, slicing his claymore in half and depriving the alien of anything but his sheer bulk and rage to engage with.  
Seeing that his foes kinetic barriers were still down and that his Sniper support was now incapacitated, Lieutenant Soanso reconfigured his Omnitool via the neural interface linking his brain to his armour and launched a small canister directly at the Krogan's face.

After a few seconds, the onboard smart computer calculated that it was in the optimal position to discharge its incendiary contents and split open to allow the jelly like substance held inside to latch onto the upper body of the huge alien.  
It wasn't unlike the napalm used in the First Tiberian War, only it burnt for far longer and at higher temperatures, all allowed, nay, encouraged under GDI's standard policy of overkill.  
The upper torso and head section of the beast lit up with a neon intensity that served to stop the regenerative capabilities of the Krogan rampaging inside the room._  
_  
Now blinded by the flames washing over his helmet and without a weapon to attack with, the Krogan resorted to using his sheer mass to demolish the human nearby.  
Soanso dodged the two swooping arms attempting to grasp onto him and crush his insides and triggered his JumpJet. White and blue flame accompanied the lowering of his body mass and he shot upwards and onto a nearby shipping container, giving him the elevation and distance needed to catch his breath.

"Six Three B, stabilise A! Provide fire support if possible!"

The weapon indicator on his Werewolf pinged to let him know that a second slug for his Railgun was ready and that the heat build up from the previous shot had been cycled out. Holographic sights on the rifle and on his HUD linked up to ensure that his firing angle was spot on as he looked down at the Krogan. The angry alien's gaze had followed Soanso after he'd ripped off his helmet and by proxy the flames that were blinding his vision and now he was charging the shipping container that the Lieutenant stood upon, grabbing one of the bolted walls of cover out of the floor in the process.

Soanso fired a heartbeat later and watched as time seemed to slow down around him. The shell carrying its payload of tungsten broke the atmosphere in front and around itself as it closed the distance between it and the Krogan who was now moving the square piece of cover in front of his lower neck and shoulder section, directly in the path of the projectile.  
Not even half a second later the round collided with the obstruction lying between it and its target, velocity slowing as it smashed through the square's dense carbon material and through to the interlocking layers of kinetic padding, reinforced ceramic and half strength kinetic shielding protecting the krogan's shoulder area.

There was the sound of glass breaking, armour cracking and primal yelling as the Krogan felt the round dig into the area between his shoulder joint and collar bone instead of tearing the whole arm off. His advance suffered and his momentum was thrown off by the halting force of the shell causing him to slow to a less dangerous speed than what his charge would have been a second earlier.  
Soanso triggered his JumpJets once again as he moved into the clear center of the room next to the burning bodies of the pirates he'd helped to dispatch at the start of the raid, just as the krogan collided with the shipping container.  
The wall of the container deformed inwards under the strain of a ton of meat moving at a little over twelve miles per hour while the rest of the object moved away from the impact with a screeching wail of protest.

"This is B, A's stable for now, continuing to provide overwatch!"

Soanso fired a sustained three second burst into the Krogan who had become unstuck from the mold of himself his impact had made in the container and was currently in the middle of relocating where his foe had moved to.  
The gunfire answered his question but also served to keep his barriers from recharging, but that didn't register in the Krogan's mind, it had already been taken over by the blood lust that was the trademark of the species.

"B, target his right leg and see if you can't sever it."

"Copy."

The sniper reset his rifle onto a piece of the stair way wall that hadn't been blown apart from the hammer and oriented his sights on the Krogan now trying with considerable effort to grab hold of his commanding officer who was firing shot after shot at his pursuer in an effort to keep his barriers down.  
The weak knee joint that was obscured by all the armoured plating the alien was wearing came into view through the magnification of his scope.  
Heat monitors reported all clear as he depressed the trigger once more and let loose a shot that would hopefully turn things around for the three remaining humans.

His prayers were answered as bone, ligaments, and yellow blood exited the Krogan's weak point after the round had cleared through it. He reacquired the knee again as the beast turned his attention away from the Lieutenant and towards him, ignoring the pain now undoubtedly registering in his mind.  
His heat sink allowed for one more shot before it entered its cool down cycle and he wasted no time in taking advantage of the fact, firing again and watching the lower leg of the Krogan break away from the rest of his body, causing the target to fall on his hump and cease being able to pursue either of the human's.

Soanso saw the new found weakness and like his sniper, wasted no time in exploiting it.  
His Werewolf went into full auto mode as he swept the now helpless body of the alien for as long as his weapon module's heat sink would allow, raking his target with bullets and watching as several streams of blood dripped out from various openings in his flesh. When the chime of an overheat alarm rang in his ear he switched to his Railgun module and listened as the usual hiss and clack of its reconfiguration took place. The fin stabilised round flew forth a second later and impacted the thick head plate guarding the creature's brain, cracking it and causing it to cave in under the pressure of the connecting object.

The Krogan seemed to go limp afterwards but the operative took no chances, switching to his grenade launcher module and pumping four explosive rounds into the broken remains of his face, each blowing off some part of his head and revealing the inner working of his skull.  
After a few seconds spent realising the fight was now effectively over, Soanso holstered his rifle on the magnetic locks in his back and retrieved a single fragmentation grenade, strolling up to the Krogan all the while.

He crouched down besides the Krogan's face and pulled the pin on the grenade, stuffing it inside what was left of the broken alien's brain that now bulged out either side of his fist as it compensated for the sudden lack of space. Releasing the lever that stopped the device from priming, he retracted his hand and casually walked towards the stairway and the snipers recovering there while the sound of the grenade exploding echoed behind him.  
He saw B crouched over A, his partner leaking blood from his sternum and the shredded remains of his right arm clearly visible but none the less likely to pull through, all things considered.

The Krogan not so much, he'd have a hard time dismissing that final explosive measure as just a scratch to his friends. He'd have a hard time doing anything anymore.

"B, give me his rifle and prep him to move, we aren't staying put for anyone else that comes by."

A slight crack in his voice showed just how scared the encounter had made the usually stoic lieutenant and his sniper hoped that there wasn't anything else like that Krogan on the station.

They wouldn't survive the rest of their stay if he had a brother.

* * *

_2182 Exodus Cluster. GDI command station 04__  
_

First Lieutenant Diane Solomon poured over the data that had come into her office over the past few weeks and singlehandedly turned her quiet desk job into a scramble of people coming and going as all involved worked to piece together the mountain conflicting reports that resembled a tale of events from a B movie vid.  
One of several consoles near her desk flickered to life as a stream of incoming data presented itself on its screen before bouncing to a dozen or so haptic displays located around the room and forming a large holographic walk around construct with her in the center of it all.

Lists of numbers and names were highlighted as well as a few star systems with the position of GDI vessels and bases burning orange on the displays that responded to the touch of her fingers which switched between the information that she deemed relevant or important enough to be archived. She frowned for the first time that day, her wrinkles disturbing the finer features of her otherwise youthful appearance that had served her well in the past during certain situations.  
Finishing the last remaining portions of the MRE she was eating, she set aside the empty bowl and exploded the haptic display into the shape of a galaxy map.

Hundreds of reports passed through her office every day, some were deemed important enough to stay longer than the normal twenty four hours that was the norm while some were dismissed and passed on within an hour of arrival.  
Her schedule had been hijacked recently as a reaction similar to twentieth century farmers discovering crop circles in their fields passed through the ranks of those dedicated to sorting through the intelligence brought back from the war in the Verge. While she often sorted out particular issues on her own, her current assignment had been cut into segments and spread around the staff aboard the station, each dedicated to their own little part of the mystery.

Her efforts were dedicated to solving one particular piece of the puzzle that had cropped up in the past few weeks, so far unexplained and equally unnerving, it had many in the intelligence circles buzzing.  
She placed both of her index fingers on the exclamation point covering the Adami system and pulled outwards, letting the galaxy be replaced by a few planets and moons that comprised the system.

More exclamation points popped up in various places around and on the planet of Camala while a few others hovered above an asteroid belt and the garden world's moon.  
She selected one that fell in the position of the planet's upper orbit and was rewarded with various images of destroyed ships of various designs and classes that had been scoured by a dedicated unit of drones and engineers.  
A few lines of text annotated the remains of each ship and she quickly grouped the ones that had been destroyed by conventional weapons into a cluster away from the rest, a cluster made up exclusively of Batarian ships.

She instead focused on the remains of the Initiative ships that had been broken and beaten into various pieces of debris that would hamper orbital traffic around the planet for many years to come.  
Increasing the zoom on one piece of debris that was adorned with the name of the ship, the Christchurch, she tagged various details for more information from the teams on site sifting through the remains.  
The long, almost surgical cuts along the name section suggested that whatever the weapon was, it was clean, precise and had made a mockery of some of the toughest ships in the initiatives arsenal.

"EVA, scan for similarities on the other cruisers and requisition Daley's files on the ground team."

"_Acknowledged, commencing scan."_

Whilst the data on the various ships were probed with the A.I.'s quantum eye, new files appeared to replace the orbital view with a planetary one, a view of a town square, to be more exact.

The usual prefab buildings and lack of any colour or variety in architecture greeted her, as was so common on every Batarian world thanks to their industrial and societal corpses near the central square were the only signs that anyone had actually inhabited the ghost town that was now overflowing with equipment and Marine platoons.

The latter had searched some seventy percent of the city's housing and manufacturing facilities at the time of their report with nothing, not even a blood stain besides the ones in the square being discovered by the search parties. Squadrons of recon drones and fast moving foot patrols were busy searching the surrounding mountains and jungle around the city for possible holdouts of the original population while Corpsman with more than just the standard skill set went over the bodies with a fine tooth comb.  
The latter was reporting that progress had hit an unexpected dead end but that their analysis was still ongoing and that she could expect an update soon.

In other words, they hadn't found shit.

"_Analysis complete, no match found."_

The passive words of the EVA unit ruled out two things. Any known ship to ship weapon employed by the main powers inhabiting the galaxy was not responsible for the destruction in orbit and two; the findings had just crossed out any chance of the weekly report calming down the top brass who were speculating about the situation like they had earned a PHD from their ability to speculate.

She scoffed, the old men who comprised the upper echelons of high command were often little better than a bunch of pretentious schoolgirls with too much time on their hands and that had the ripple effect of hampering her work through some or other method.  
More details came in from the corpses themselves but nothing unusual was presented other than the fact that they were dead thanks to a few bullet wounds. The wounds in question didn't indicate any exotic weaponry as the culprit and she doubted that she'd find something on them that hadn't already been noted.

She swept the haptic display back to the orbital view and concentrated on the wreckage of the destroyed Wolfpack while methods of colony extermination ran through her mind.  
So far as they could prove, no one but the people directly involved with the investigation knew about the unique event that had occurred just a few weeks prior. That was naive thinking of course, nothing like this was kept secret for very long and when it was discovered, the ones responsible rarely let the source know about it.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

_ 2182 Planet Marathon_

The sun glinted down on his helmet as his eyes took in the sight of Brandy Station. The two long runways for heavy lift vehicles as well as the three dozen or so landing pads for Orcas and whatever VTOL aircraft were assigned to the airfield all made up the landscape of the busy airbase. From his position in the hangar he could see multiple Coyote fighting vehicles travelling on the stretch of road designated for vehicles near the closest runway and behind that he saw multiple members of what looked like a maintenance detachment positioning a repair vehicle over a section of dents in the tarmac while others moved several pieces of equipment out of the way.

He reached for a section of his uniform where an itch had started to annoy him and decided that the day was too nice to not let the rays of sunshine touch his unprotected face, setting his thermos full of coffee down on the ground and removing his helmet.  
The warm rays of the system's star washed over his face as he grabbed the thermos with his free hand and began to make his way towards one of the nearby underground service hangars and the tour he'd scheduled for himself.  
Due to control of space being a fickle assurance at the best of times, reinforced underground storage hangars were built to house and arm aircraft before elevators carried them to the surface where they could launch.

This protected the valuable fighters and ground strike aircraft inside from orbital bombardment and other pesky space launched weapons. These Hangars were supplemented by surface hangars used to house equipment that was deemed non critical such as raw materials and office supplies or aircraft during peace time.  
He scanned the nearby area for the jut in the ground that signified the entrance before sighting the three by four meter "door" that served as a small vehicle entrance for the aforementioned hangars. His legs had already swung him towards the entry as he pulled out the assigned keycard that granted him access.

_"Reynolds, Malcolm, Captain. Access level Yellow Two. Access granted."_**  
_  
_**The familiar voice of the base EVA greeted him as the card in his hand was scanned for the relevant information needed. After a few more moments, the huge grey doors sealing the underground facility groaned as their unseen mechanism caused them to separate into two and retract into the ground below with surprising speed. Reynolds made a mental note to put in a suggestion for a more varied colour palette for the different buildings beyond grey, gunmetal grey, ceramic grey and the occasional orange.

Being a side entrance, he didn't encounter as much traffic as he had expected, only the occasional serviceman and minor repair drone marked the diagonal descent into the facility proper. Some two minutes later and he finally arrived in the underground storage facility.  
To the untrained eye, it might seem as though there was very little difference between peacetime and wartime activities for a GDI base and, to their credit, there really wasn't.

Complacency was the enemy of an armed force that wished to remain strong and so, when on duty, all enlisted personnel participated in various readiness exercises to keep them physically and mentally prepared for unexpected situations.  
The recent developments in space had put everyone on alert lately but, given the lack of any immediate danger or follow up developments, things were beginning to calm down.

He noted the various different aircraft scattered around the large underground chamber as well as the dozens of ground crew personnel tending to them. He spied the sixteen Firehawks that he and his soon to be present squadron were set to use during their stint here as well as various drone vehicles and Hammerhead helicopters that supported the nearby Marine base.

Behind them he could make out a holo sign with an arrow that, if he was correct and not delusional, lead to a hangar dedicated to an ACS-240 Nightmare support craft. God help anyone that pissed that thing off. Strange thing was, Reynolds hadn't heard of a Nightmare being used in colony defense, only in tandem with ground offensives on Batarian worlds. He'd have to look that up later.

"Ah Captain, over here!" A voice called out from behind a series of toolboxes and other various trays of equipment before a hand popped out to wave him over.

He made his way over towards his summoner as he weaved his way between the other members of the ground crew that were present, trying not spill his coffee in one hand or drop the helmet in the other.

"Ah, hello?" The Captain quizzed the ground when his eyes failed to find a human figure before him.

"Sorry sir," A haggard voice came from somewhere below. " I would salute you but I've just got to deal with this one little problem here" The statement followed by a shower of sparks as the tell tale sound of an omnitool cutting away at metal became audible.

"No worries, I'm just a tourist here at the moment so I feel like I'm intruding." Reynolds replied. That got a laugh from the burly man currently repairing the nearby Firehawk.

"Usually the pilots I've dealt with lay claim to everything they see before introducing themselves, nice to see someone different for a change." This time it was Reynolds who chuckled. Pilots weren't usually known for their humble attitudes on the ground.

"So you're a fighter jock?" The man slid out from under the orange and grey fighter craft as his attention turned towards his new visitor, a casual salute being offered before returning to his task.

Reynolds finished off the last little bit of coffee that he had been sculling before placing it on a nearby work table. All around him, Munitions crews and Pilots performed the usual flight checks and diagnostics before the daily patrols in the skies above as in the distance displayed on various screens scattered all around, the skyline of the nearby city sat while the various floating vehicles that ferried the inhabitants buzzed the tops of buildings close by.

"Off and on, I'm qualified for both fighter craft and strike craft. Flew the ASP-30's out on the runs between the surface of Mars and the Philadelphia before our squadron was transferred to the Attican Beta cluster." Reynolds finally answered.

"Shit, didn't that sector get hit by all kinds of Pirates before the war?" The man quizzed as his omnitool lit up and emitted an orange beam that swept the midsection and recorded the feedback from the flight computer.

"Like flies on chocolate covered shit. The man most desperate to make our acquaintance was Karkak Solem, nasty little bastardwhoses mother never taught him to not play around with flamethrowers and nerve gas."  
Any area near the lawless Terminus Systems was bound to be attacked by pirates sometime in its lifetime. Although the cost was often horrible in terms of lives lost for colonists, it did have the benefit of being a testing ground for response times and new technologies.

"I heard about him, something about how he liked to skin some of the people he and his crew picked up?"  
The man fired off another question as Reynolds made a mental note to stir conversation into light hearted territory when it came to the more inquisitive members of the ground crew.

"Like I said, nasty little bastard, but he won't be doing much of anything now. Five hundred pounds of explosives and a couple dozen incendiary rocket strikes tends to leave one's body in a-" He paused as he searched for the right words. "-less than ideal state."  
Solem's first mistake was choosing to attack without neutralising the response assets before landing.  
The second had been landing the day Malcolm was out on patrol loaded with I32 Firecracker missiles and an accompanying squadron of Firehawks. There hadn't been much of anything left of the APC or the rest of the convoy that the pirate had been travelling with at the time after the squadron was finished.

"Ha, he got a poetic end by the sounds of it. So how long are you here for?" The man asked as more sparks fell and danced on the metal floor.

"For the next two months flying Firehawks before I go back to Orca's in the Verge, then I get to play God with our noble enemies." The supposed reasons for the war didn't fool him; all he saw was a problem that needed to be quashed. Preferably with lots of explosive ordinance and maybe an Ion cannon just for the hell of it.

"Where's the rest of your squadron then?"

"The Orcas are in for retrofits but the rest of us will be coming here as well, I just drew the short stick and got sent out here first. Sorting out housing and everything else for the guys and gals." Reynolds chuckled at that.

"Well with the war and everything we're pretty shorthanded out here, before those new Marines arrived we were under our pre-war garrison strength, but I guess that's the case for a lot of colonies these days."  
The man shrugged as several nearby members of the ground crew finished off loading air to air missiles and ground strike munitions near the other Firehawks set for patrol.

"Yeah, don't sit right does it?," He trudged over to the nose section of the Firehawk as another shower of sparks whistled behind him. "We'll win this thing soon enough, don't you worry your pretty little head."  
His hand ran admiringly over the smooth material of the craft and he silently thought of the many fond memories he had of the Firehawk, the grace of it manoeuvring through the atmosphere while the ordinance he'd just delivered lit up the sky behind it.

"You mind if I take a look?" He asked.

"Sure, you're gonna be flying them soon enough so you might as well get to know 'em." The man replied.

He cocked his head to face the inner sanctum that was the cockpit, drinking in the detail of every piece of equipment. He drew up a memory of his time spent flying Firehawks earlier in his career and compared it to what his eyes saw. It was slightly more spacious with an updated Heads Up Display and pilot interface as well as an air freshener meant to make the filtration systems slightly more pleasant.  
The smell of recycled air hit him as he looked closer at the joystick before a voice not belonging to the engineer spoke out.

"Sir, if you would like something more than just a purely visual inspection, might I suggest last week's flight reports?" A smooth voice asked in an accent that was identical to someone from the London Blue Zone on Earth.

"And who would that be?" He quizzed. He was really wondering if people liked hiding around him or he was slowly becoming inept at locating strangers.

A ping sounded and to the side of him, a holographic projection of a dome helmet popped up, the black outline of where the transparent helmet glass would be was replaced with a yellow octagonal smiley face.

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Born February 8th, 2160. Enlisted in 2178. Two tours in the Skyllian verge, four air to air kills as well as fifteen ground strike missions completed."

"You're very thorough for a EAA unit, what's your squad designation?" He asked.

"I am designated simply as Andy, the EAA unit for Smoke Squadron. Your assigned wingman, Lieutenant Ben Gannon, is currently enjoying dinner in the mess hall. Would you like me to send him a message requesting his presence?" Andy was quick to make suggestions for someone who'd only just shown up.

"I think I'll go and meet him on my own steam, besides, why would I want to leave this fine looking machine and yourself all by your lonesome?" He tapped the side of the cockpit for emphasis.

"I see that you are a man of excellent taste, Captain. Would you like me to update your resume to include irresistible charisma or can I help you with another topic today?" If Reynolds didn't know that Andy was a machine and therefore incapable of emotion, he would swear that he was enjoying the act of teasing him.

"I think we'll stick with how it is at the moment though I'm thinking your resume could use the addition of "sarcastic" and "kind of moody" to your list of character matrix attributes, maybe even "narcissistic" while we're at it?" Two could very easily play at this game and he had all the time in the world to do it in.

"An excellent suggestion but I'm going to have to decline, having my resume edited by a man who argues with non sentient machines wouldn't look too good to future employers." Reynolds hadn't taken that little tidbit of information into account and felt slightly embarrassed at the fact.

With that the holographic helmet popped out of view, satisfied it had welcomed the new pilot in a suitable manner, while the blue light it had emitted faded to be replaced by the hangars overhead lighting.

Reynolds turned as he began to step out from the cockpits chair from which he been sitting in, feeling slightly more humble after the conversation he'd had.  
His legs carried him over the back and onto the main body of the fuselage where the body of the flying beast lay and he feasted his eyes on the various protrusions and detail of the Firehawk.  
The sleek angle at which the wings bent before sharpening into the hard corners on the wingtips, the two mass accelerators located just to either side of the nose and the divot in the crafts back just in front of the two main engines.  
Damn, she was beautiful.

_And she's all mine_

His gaze of admiration ceased as more earthly matters came back to mind. He jumped down onto the solid floor below before the engineer spoke again.

"She should be good to go now, just a coupling that needed replacing." The engineer's neutral expression turned into a grin before he spoke again. "Don't worry about Andy, he's like that when he's on the ground and dealing with us earth bound people but when you're flying he's got your back."

The engineer then grabbed a rag to wipe his hands with and gestured back towards the entrance tunnel that Reynolds had come through.

"The mess is just to left as you come up topside, you can't miss it." His fingers moved to emphasise the point.

"Thanks, good talking with you trooper . . . ?"

"Blake, sir, Adrian Blake." The man called as he backpedalled towards another Firehawk.

"Catch you round Blake." Reynolds replied as he picked up the now empty thermos of coffee that he had discarded a few minutes earlier and moved towards the sweet sunshine that awaited him above, making a mental note to continue his planned tour after visiting the mess.

* * *

_**Codex entry - Mercenaries**_

_**Found in all corners of the galaxy, the typical mercenary is a former military or police officer who has completed their terms of service and has moved to market their skills to the various individuals across the galaxy who require people possessing the skill set needed to carry out certain operations of their choosing, all while offering a much higher wage than the military organisations that they originated from.**_  
_**Despite attempts to regulate the industry, there is little accountability or method of quality control in the system and frauds and unprofessional individuals are a constant problem.**_  
_**The constant outflow of servicemen from across the galaxy help keep the odds of hiring less than satisfactory members of the trade on the lower end of the spectrum, however, especially with the arrival of humanity on the galactic stage which has actually meant a boon for the industry.**_  
_**Given Humanities heavily militarised nature, there is a higher prospect of ex service members entering the field and pursuing third party employment.**_

_**Mercenaries are heavily utilised by rebellions, colonist collectives, drug cartels and pirates for various purposes but the most common employer of the galaxy's guns for hire are corporations.**_  
_**These individuals are employed to safeguard corporate interests in areas that are on the fringe of civilised space or are conducting research and development that might fall victim to corporate espionage while others are used to carry out said espionage.**_  
_**Governments also utilise Mercenaries to an extent thanks to the ease at which their involvement as the employer is able to be concealed, an example being the Batarian Hegemony who mixes mercenary and Pirate organisations for operations that the state cannot afford to be directly implicated in.**_

_**It is for these reasons that most galactic governments disapprove of the use of mercenaries, at least, by their enemies. The Citadel Conventions reflect this mindset, as do the Defense Conventions drafted by the GDI government, stating that mercenaries captured in wartime are not to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war, but rather criminals who may be executed without trial or fair of repercussions. Certain mercenary groups are lobbying politicians on the Citadel for a more lax attitude towards their involvement in war and peace time conditions but so far have been unsuccessful in doing so.**_  
_**Others have had more luck with the Human government whose inbred military traditions cause a more sympathetic attitude to arise concerning ex service members.**_

* * *

Author's word:

Well this chapter went through a ton of rewrites and parts of it that were planned to be implemented were cannibalised for future purposes.  
I know that I waited quite a while to update and I apologise but I'm letting you know that nine thousand words is now the standard chapter length that I'll be working towards. Given what I have planned, I'll easily exceed it.

Until next time.


End file.
